Peter,

> Karl, I enjoy reading about your instinctive hikes. They sound like a lot
> of fun.

Yes, that's true. I enjoy these hikes very much.

> I have some questions for you. How do you catch the grasshoppers,
> how do they taste, do your companions eat them as well, do you eat them
> while they are still alive - if so, do you eat the head first or eat the
> whole insect in one mouthful?

Catching them is very easy. When they are slow, I just pick them from
the grass blades. Or I slap them with the flat hand and pick them up
from the ground. Especially in the evening there are lots of them sitting
on sunny slopes.
During a wild plants excursion with a local plants specialist (Sepp Ott)
I watched some children chasing grasshoppers for fun. This seems to be
a good indication of an instinctive motivation for insect chasing.

The grasshoppers, which I caught on the hike, tasted very well. For me
it's like calf ragout. And the shell has no taste at all, but it feels
like crackers in the mouth. When Bruno Comby was still at Montrame, I
tasted one of his crickets, it was even better then grasshoppers, then.
But not all insects taste good. Once I tried an awful little black
beetle. I spent the following minutes spitting and trying to get that
taste out of my mouth. :-)

And I always eat the insects alive, in one piece. I haven't yet found any
real big ones, but I suppose that I would have to eat them in pieces.

After eating much grasshoppers on the last hike, I had no interest in
catching and eating them on yesterday's hike. The need for them seems
to be satisfied for some time.

-Karl