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Kill Suks, Volume 1: Attack of the fiendish gargantuan grasshoppers

Kill Suks, Volume 1: Attack of the fiendish gargantuan grasshoppers
Sukasha Singh
By Sukasha Singh
8 Oct 2024
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What should have been a calming stroll in a tranquil botanical garden quickly turned into an adrenaline-pumping race for survival.

All I wanted was to spend a few hours meandering around the beautiful Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens. I was on leave and I felt like chilling out by myself in the shade of a big tree while doing absolutely nothing, because doing nothing is all the rage right now, if you haven’t heard.

Driving to the gardens, in Roodepoort, I envisioned myself strolling serenely along the path to the waterfall, stopping to admire the colourful flowers in bloom and taking in the expansive natural beauty that us South Africans are so lucky to have all around us.

Little did I know that my hopes for a peaceful morning would soon be obliterated by hordes of fiendish bugs.

A big group of noisy schoolkids on an excursion milled around the entrance. The teachers were already having a tough time keeping them all together so I sped up to put some space between me and the young ’uns.

A short distance into the park I noticed what I thought were unusual little budgies of some sort. There were a few of them flying around nearby and their striking green and red wings made me stop and take a pic so that I could ask the bird nerds on our editorial group to help identify them. Then one of them landed on the grass two metres from me and I realised it wasn’t a budgie at all. It was a very large grasshopper.

I’m not particularly fond of grasshoppers, but I don’t have an aversion to them and there were just a few flying around near the entrance, so I decided to carry on walking.

Initially, three or four were flying overhead, but the closer I got to sections of the path where the shrubbery was thick on both sides, the more grasshoppers there were.

Squashed bugs


I came across a particularly stinky section where liberal amounts of manure had just been added to the flower beds and there were now several grasshoppers flying back and forth across the path all around me. I didn’t even notice the blooming flowers as I walked faster, gripped the straps of my backpack, put my head down and marched purposefully onward.

As I strode ever more quickly, I found myself hopping, skipping and swearing out loud while trying to avoid the many squashed bugs on the path because I didn’t want to get sticky insect remains on my shoes.

Just when I’d exited the smelly section and was nearing the bridge, I lifted my gaze from the ground and saw dozens of them flying ahead of me.

This was too much. I tried to steel myself and walk through, but for some reason scenes of screechy crows from Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds were playing in my head as I ducked – often – to avoid the grasshoppers. They didn’t seem to be attacking me, but it felt as if they were.

Could the hoppers collectively come to the conclusion that humans are destroying the planet (because we are), and lash out at us to save their home? Is it possible that they’ve watched The Birds, or Kill Bill Volume 1 and they’re now hellbent on revenge?

Time slowed down, the bright sunlight highlighted the blighters’ lurid green and red wings, and as the sharpness of the colours of every­thing around me took on an ominous tone I realised that I was more than a little anxious.

Adrenaline and fear got the better of me and even though I didn’t want to, I turned around to go back. I was jogging and swearing as I continued hopping around to avoid the squashed bugs, and then I saw a woman a few metres ahead who was having a good laugh at me.

“Bloody hell! No one said anything about navigating a gauntlet of giant grasshoppers,” I said loudly as I neared her. She laughed even more.

“Can I walk behind you please? Maybe if I walk in your slipstream I’ll be protected from these things,” I said, sounding more panic-stricken than I would’ve liked. She nodded, but couldn’t squeeze out any words because she was still chortling at my ridiculous behaviour.

Human shield


For a few seconds I marvelled at my clever­ness in using this friendly woman as a human shield and then a grasshopper landed on the right cheek of her bum. She was unfazed by this and carried on walking. I, however, was transfixed. I stared at her butt wondering if it was a case of her having a really small rear end, or if that particular grasshopper – which was nearly the same length as her bum cheek from top to bottom – was a giant mutant version of the species.

Thankfully, the unwelcome hitchhiker flew off a few seconds later as we walked over the bridge towards the waterfall.

I stopped at the waterfall, but the ­woman in front of me didn’t.

She had a rolled-up yoga mat sticking out of her backpack and as she walked away I wondered if enduring the grasshopper ordeal would’ve been easier if my intermittent meditations had been more regular.

Just as my heart rate slowed and the calm rushing sound of the waterfall soothed my frazzled nerves, I noticed yet more grasshoppers flying in front of me.

I turned around and spotted a large tree with an unoccupied bench in its shade, so I walked over.

I sat down and giggled at the schoolkids who were shriek­­ing at the grasshoppers and skipping along the path just as I had done, and just then an enormous grasshopper with a smug expression landed on the bench next to me. It seemed to be saying: “You can’t escape, Suks. Have you ever watched The Birds?”

A phenomenally bad idea


I shrieked as loudly as one of the children, jumped up and ran across the grass towards the pathway. That was a phenomenally bad idea. The scheming villains in this story were the same colour as the grass and they were all over it. They started to fly up at me and seemed to be swarming. The ruthless students noticed me and started to laugh as they shouted “Run! They’re chasing you!”

I felt those ghastly buggers bouncing off my hat and my shorts as I ran all the way back to my bakkie. I did a quick check before getting in to ensure there weren’t any un­­invited guests attached to my hat, my backpack or my shoes. There weren’t any.

Phew! I made it. I was safe.

I drove out, covered in sweat. My smartwatch said my heart rate was 161bpm, and I thought: “Oh well, if nothing else, at least I did a good workout today.” DM

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.

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