Jumping Rocks

This weekend Trevor and I discovered something interesting. We have jumping rocks at hour house. Along our driveway, we have rock and bushes. We were weeding the rocks, as the mole** and the ants have created tunnels for the weeds to get through the barrier and up into the rocks. As we were weeding, we began to notice something peculiar. The rocks were jumping away from us.

As we watched, it happened again and again. Finally, Trevor decided to catch a jumping rock. He stalked through the rock bed, looking for a jumping rock. I went back to weeding. A bit later he came over with a rock for me to look at. I looked at the rock in his hand. The top of it looked suspiciously like a grasshopper. He gave the 'rock' to me. It bounced off my hand.

How long does a species take to adapt to it's surroundings, to evolve? Not long apparently, because the rock in front of our house has only been there for 2-3 years. The little hoppers of grass were not green, or brown, but grey and speckled. They looked exactly like our rock. They are now hoppers of rock, or 'jumping rocks', at our house. They look silly when the perch on a plant and try to blend in.

We weeded the rocks up the driveway and in front of the house for 2 hours on Saturday and 1-2 on Sunday. That got that area cleaned up, but we have more to go. It was just to darned hot to weed more than that, and I'm not getting up on a Saturday at 6 AM unless I have Very Good Reason. Weeding doesn't constitute a Very Good Reason. I'll get to the rest of it piecemeal, this week.

**Sidebar - the mole has attacked our back yard in earnest. Apparently it did not like me jumping on it trails. It has made them everywhere!! Trevor has set the trap, and we will be setting bait and perhaps even feeding it caster oil. We will not be bested by a mole.