Invasion of the Loco Locusts

I filled my backyard with sunflowers because
1. They are pretty and they make me happy
2.  According to theory, the bugs and other pests will leave the garden alone, and only eat the sunflowers.
Maybe this is true.  The sunflower leaves are infested with aphids, and my cucumbers are just fine.  But the sunflowers are covered in these crazy grasshoppers.  Then they ate my apple tree!
Once again, I think that planting sunflowers amongst the garden might be just another wives-tale passed onto the pilgrims from the ancient Indians.  (The feather Indians, not the dot Indians.)

I watched this permaculture video by this guy in Australia named Geoff Lawton.  He said that if you have a grasshopper infestation, then you have a lack of ducks and geese.  In my own little fantasy land, I have a full functioning permaculture food forest.
In reality, I've got a backyard full of weeds and mis shapen fruit that tastes kinda bad.  I guess I could dig a pond and get some geese, but my kids will drown in the pond, the geese will fly away, and the neighbors will call the code enforcers on me.

My husband, Clyde, told me that if I want to get rid of the grasshoppers, then I need to get rid of the sunflowers.  The sunflowers are looking kind of scraggly looking, and I guess it's time to get rid of them.  They shade out the rest of the plants, and hog all the nutrients from the soil.  I guess I planted them too close to my other plants.

So one night, I started pulling up the sunflowers, and those evil grasshoppers started swarming and landing all over me.  I had a bad experience with grasshoppers lately.  The last time I declared war on the grasshoppers and started killing them, one of the twins, Nick Kick, had a terrible accident with a shovel.


But of course, that's ridiculous.  Those grasshoppers don't really have supernatural powers.  That's impossible.  That's just silly.  But still, I wonder.  It seems like ever since that week that I went around smashing grasshoppers, those little buggers keep flying into me and landing on me.  It's almost as if they are trying to intimidate me.
Just look at them!  They're everywhere.

They're evil and they're just waiting for the perfect moment to attack me.  So when I started pulling up the sunflowers, I started thinking of that old movie by Alfred Hitchcock called "The Birds"  I guess being attacked by a flock of birds doesn't seem as scary as Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, but when you're being attacked by dozens of little varmints, it's a whole nother story.

Those grasshoppers landed all over me.  It was freaky.  I just knew they were after me.  I'm bigger and stronger.  So I started pulling them off and squishing them so I could run back inside where it's nice and safe.  Boy was I wrong.  Those things are telekinetic.  As soon as I got inside, the other twin, Porkchop Flannigan, did a summer sault off the back of the sofa and landed flat on his face.  He got a bloody lip and busted a tooth out.  He looked like Mohamed Ali after a boxing match.  He spit out a tooth and a mouthful of blood.

It makes me wonder though, is it the grasshoppers doing this, or is it my own telekinetic powers gone crazy due to fear.