I still don't understand why I was so hungry as a child. No matter how much food you eat, your stomach is like a big pocket full of dissatisfaction, and you are hungry almost every day, and you often worry about "eating".
I still haven't figured out why I was so greedy in my childhood. I don't know how many bugs I've caught and how many elves I've eaten in nature. I can "eat a long meal", because I can't see meat for a year or so, I am always so short, like those trees on the stone mountain, which grow very slowly and often worry my mother.
In the countryside at that time, children's toys were almost all their own "inventions". Those common small animals are the best playthings for our rural children. I've known those bugs since I was a kid wearing open-backed pants. When my mother came home from work in the fields, she opened the curled sleeves and trouser legs, and sometimes she took out some live bugs. Then tie it with a thread and let me play with it. Those bugs suddenly crawled on the ground and danced in the air. They couldn't fly far, and I pulled them back. I tortured the little bugs to death, and sometimes they were accidentally taken away by chickens, so I would "wow" and cry and chase the chickens away.
Every summer, during the transplanting season, there is a cricket-like "little earth dog" in the paddy field raked by the ox plough. When the home is flooded and there is no way out, it will float on the water, panic and climb up the ridge, and finally it will be doomed and fall into my hands. Soon, the seedlings gradually turned green, frogs in the rice fields were like a tide, and a black bug named "water hen" was born. They suddenly plunged into the rice fields and climbed up the rice seedlings to play. Once I found the target, I quickly took off my shoes and rolled up trouser legs's field. The winged amphibious "water hen" was caught by me. Taking it home, I put the "water hens" on the ground, played the role of a coach, directed them with a large chicken stick, and kept running relay races, which was endless fun. Finally, the "water hen" became my insignificant "meat".
After growing up, I followed the "doll head", and my figure often moved in the upper reaches of the field, looking for pig grass and catching bugs that can be played and eaten as meat, and constantly gaining experience in predation and growth. Every year in the warm spring in bloom, crops and weeds in the fields grow wildly, and grasshoppers, which are parasitic in the green grass, also stick to the young grass tips like a meeting and whisper to each other. Facing the rising sun, we beat the dew with branches in our hands, while driving away the grasshoppers. The frightened grasshoppers flew and jumped, and fled everywhere. I aimed at the target with quick hand and quick eye, and quietly lurked in the past. Those grasshoppers named "Old Jumping God", "Big Green Head", "Little Steel Head" and "Oil Gourd" were caught by hand and put into the grasshoppers.
During the autumn harvest, I often follow my mother to see the women in the village mowing the grain. Those grasshoppers don't know that their homes will disappear with the cutting of rice. In the sound of "Cha Cha" cutting grain, the frightened grasshopper kept flying forward and falling down, as if in a long jump competition, constantly chasing the fallen rice stalks and "moving forward" until they were driven to the head of the field. The rice is about to be completely cut, and the grasshoppers will soon be homeless. I have already sown tight encirclement on the other side of the field, and I have caught all kinds of grasshoppers, seven big and eight small, and it is another "bumper harvest". Take it home, at least you can add a bowl of dishes, so that the whole family can taste the "meat flavor."
Catching insects is the innate instinct of rural children. Every summer, there is a kind of locust called Dendrolimus punctatus, which is as big as a broad bean and yellow, a little like a scarab and more like a firefly. It disappears without a trace during the day, and when night falls, it will "buzz" on the persimmon tree and the "tower branch tree" beside the vegetable garden, crawling all over the branches like fruit. We quietly take the flashlight at home and climb up like a group of monkeys. Seeing the light, the "Dendrolimus punctatus" stopped moving, quietly lying on the branches and leaves, casually reaching out, catching two or three at a time, stuffing them into gourds, taking them home and scalding them to death with boiling water, taking off their wings, feet and hands, cleaning them, and frying them in an oil pan, which is also full of fragrant "meat".
In my eyes, cicada is one of the smartest insects. They stand on the branches of trees, like those Yi folk singers with crisp voices, singing the fields and the countryside, and the falling cicadas seem to be holding a folk song contest. Cicada's ballad contest is very long. It seems to be in gallants, and it is difficult to tell the winner. It is sung almost every year from summer to autumn. We followed the cicada's singing quietly, only to find that those cicadas were like lovers in love, inseparable and lingering, and became prisoners in our hands without anyone knowing. "Beat mandarin ducks", we take the cicadas we caught home and play until we can't hear their songs, then feed the chickens or burn them, so that we can enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Every rainy season, when mushrooms and termites are abundant, after a few days of continuous rain, the "flying ants" who have changed from pupae to moths in the "termites nest" will break through the ground and fly all over the sky like snowflakes on the roads and ridges around the village. At the moment, those birds are also falling from the sky, such as bats feeding on mosquitoes, one after another, preying on ants in succession. Not to be outdone, those chickens that are planing everywhere flock to chase and peck ants. Barefoot, we ran in the direction of Ran Ran, an ant, and launched a foraging war with birds and chickens. Everyone occupied a hole. As soon as the ants climbed out of the cave and flapped their wings to fly high, they fell into the palm of our hands, waiting for them, and then put them into the bottle. Ants with wings that are difficult to fly take them home and fry them in oil, which is delicious and dry.
In autumn in Shan Ye, there are many wasps, which are very big and often build their nests on leafy trees. We call them "gourd bags". Finding the "gourd bag" requires skill. Generally, when the sun just rises in the morning and the sun is about to set at dusk, wasps will line up in the same direction in an orderly manner, flying back and forth, and it is easy to expose their targets. Sharp-eyed, we kept searching along the route where the wasp flew. Through repeated reconnaissance, we went through hardships to find the wasp's nest. Whoever finds the "gourd bag" is a secret, never revealing any clues in front of others, and has been secretly watching it and keeping it in the tree until the "gourd burned in July and burned in August" is mature. Because wasps sting people, they are very toxic, and if they bite too much, they will be red and swollen all over the body, causing people to die. Many people are scared even when they see "gourd bags", for fear of hurting their bodies for their mouths. I don't know how many times we went to burn "gourd buns", but I didn't know how many entrances and exits there were in the hornet's nest, and there were hornets standing guard at any time. The hornet with higher vigilance will attack several of our intruders when they hear us talking and see the fire, and they will be in hot pursuit and sting people. We have to be defeated, run away, plot again and organize a second attack. We learned from our mistakes, and prepared enough Song Ming torches a few days in advance. While it was dark, several friends were armed to the teeth and shouted into the mountains to make a comeback. Upon arrival, the division of labor and cooperation, some climb trees, some ignite, and the flaming torch goes straight into the "gourd bag". In a moment, the wasps that were sent between people were like moths to the fire, and the whole army was wiped out. They quickly took off the "gourd bag" and put it in their pockets. After hastily putting out the fire, we returned home after winning a battle, and dug out the baby-sleeping bee pupae in the honeycomb cake one by one, scalded them with hot water, dried them in the sun, or shared them equally, or shared a rare sumptuous meal, which always nourished our stomachs and relieved us of the long-lost meat.
Children who grow up in the mountains have to go up the mountain to cut wood and knock on "tree bumps" since childhood. We often go up the mountain in groups of three or five, carrying axes and baskets, twittering like a flock of sparrows, looking for those "tree bone piles" whose upper body has been cut down for a long time, leaving behind loneliness and gradual decay. We hold the axe in our hands, and we turn the axe off and chop it constantly. The sawdust is flying everywhere, and the sound of the axe hitting a knot in one's heart resounds through the valley. With the utmost efforts, the "tree bone piles" were all cut down and broken open, and the wood worms as big as soil silkworms fell to the ground, picked them up, put them in pockets, and took them home to burn, which was no less than the wasp's, and their mouths were full of oil.
After my childhood of catching insects, I grew up like a bug flying away from the countryside, living in a city with rows of buildings and few trees and grass, and living a life of food and clothing. Over the past 20 years, I have moved several times. No matter where I live, flies and mosquitoes are the most common ones. Those insects as close as my childhood friends are hardly to be seen. Sometimes I go to the vegetable market to buy food, but I can't believe that someone sells the caught grasshoppers and wasps, buys some home to fry and drink, and accidentally gets drunk. Occasionally, when I go to a restaurant, I can also eat rare game dishes made of grasshoppers, wasps and bamboo worms, which makes me taste the fragrance of Cordyceps in the countryside countless times.
After entering middle age, I like to go for a walk along the Longchuan River with my wife. I often see children in those cities, chasing dragonflies hungrily on the grass with tools in their hands, but they often wrestle and fan the air. Compared with these children, my childhood is so happy. On the way home, I saw a "water hen" flying to the street lamp like the sun, being knocked dizzy and falling to the ground, dying. I bent down and turned over for them, and the "water hen" flew away again. But on the way to work the next morning, I saw several "water hens" who mistakenly regarded the city day and night as daytime, and they were killed under the street lamp and trampled by pedestrians into specimens stuck on the ground. A kind of sadness of losing their loved ones arises spontaneously.
Living in Yunnan, where the seasons are like spring, I wrote down these words in my memory about catching insects and eating insects in this season when the birds fly and the grass grows, which is not only a thank-you and gratitude to those insects, but also an apology and memorial to them.