Grasshoppers & Locusts

I came from a poor family in the North. I am the second to the eldest. The meager income of my father who is a military man can not augment the schooling and expenses of his ten (10) children.

My children are asking, how did you survive Dad?

After School, I usually go to the field and catch grasshoppers and locusts that creeps inside a dried cow dung or files of stones. My mother wipes the sweat in my face and body for she knows I am tired of chasing grasshoppers to catch them with a broom like tool. Some grasshoppers don't fly, they jump from one place to another so you can catch them easily.

Yak, said my children. Is that edible?

Leviticus 11:21 Yet these may ye eat of every flying creeping thing that goeth upon all four, which have legs above their feet, to leap withal upon the earth;

Leviticus 11:22 Even these of them ye may eat; the locust after his kind, and the bald locust after his kind, and the beetle after his kind, and the grasshopper after his kind.

In fact, this is how John the baptist survived in his days.

Mark 1:6 And John was clothed with camel's hair, and with a girdle of a skin about his loins; and he did eat locusts and wild honey;

I became the number one player in track & field during my high school days because I can chase and catch a quail when they are down on their third fall of flying because this is the time when they catch their breath and just hid anywhere.

I envy the Israelite when chasing the quails is not a problem. They just gathered them.

Numbers 11:31 And there went forth a wind from the LORD, and brought quails from the sea, and let them fall by the camp, as it were a day's journey on this side, and as it were a day's journey on the other side, round about the camp, and as it were two cubits high upon the face of the earth.

Whatever, said my youngest daughter, I will not eat anything that I don't know. No problem, I said, I will introduce you ahead before we eat them.

Burst of laughter follows.