Our Pet “Wilburs”

In 1949 my parents bought a little postwar two bedroom house in Rosemead, brand new, so new the yard was just dirt. Before my parents managed to landscape, that yard was a wonderland of insects, frogs, horned toads, and spiders. Then in 1950 they sold that house and bought one in a housing tract in Whittier. This tract was built in what used to be an orange grove, and there were vacant lots and weedy acres of land all around. We lived there for five years, the longest we ever stayed in one place. Just for historical interest, they bought the Rosemead house for $2,500; the Whittier house cost $5,500; they sold it for $12,500.

There were plenty of interesting insects and creatures in and around this house, too. My sister and I loved comic books, especially the Disney ones. In one of them, Goofy had a pet grasshopper named Wilbur. When we discovered tiny grasshoppers on some yellow flowers in our yard, it seemed only natural to catch them and name them Wilbur. In fact, I loved catching insects and drove my poor mother nuts wanting empty glass jars all the time to put them in. At one point I had an insect zoo in the garage. I wanted to charge the neighborhood kids a penny to see it, but none of them would come, so I had to force them to see it for free.

My sister and I were not allowed to have a dog or cat, after our earlier ones came to bad ends. Having a pet Wilbur seemed sort of cool, since Goofy had one. I began to observe the behavior of these cute little bugs and noticed that they would jump forward if poked in the end with a pencil. Otherwise they just climbed around. I thought about how I could use this natural behavior and built a tiny swing set with a ladder and tightrope and I made a little cardboard hoop. I “trained” them to do “tricks.” Set little Wilbur on the table, put the hoop in front of him, poke him in the butt, and he jumped through the hoop! Put him on the little swing, and he clung to it while we made it swing back and forth. Stick him at the bottom of the ladder, and he climbed it and went across the tightrope. Amazing! (Years later I became a psychologist and studied human behavior instead.)

My trained grasshopper was a hit. All the neighborhood kids wanted to see a performance, and I caused quite a stir at show-and-tell at school. My father told the men at his work about his little girl’s trained grasshopper, and apparently they did not believe him. He became indignant and insisted that they come to our house after work. Unfortunately, earlier that day my sister’s (untrained) grasshopper had eaten the legs off mine, and I hadn’t had time to catch and train another one. It took a long time for my father to forgive me for failing to substantiate his story.

In the 5th grade, my teacher, Mrs. Baltzer, took an interest in me and wondered if I wanted to know what kind of insect Wilbur was. She arranged a visit to Cal Tech to see a real scientist! She even drove my mother and me there, since Mom had no car. When I saw Cal Tech and the scientists in their lab coats among their microscopes and other equipment, I knew I wanted to be one, too. The scientist we were to see said he wasn’t sure what Wilbur was, so he took Wilbur from me and dropped some cotton with ether into his glass jar. He plopped his limp little body under a high powered microscope and studied him and let me look, too. Wilbur was even more amazing at 500X! He said that Wilbur was a katydid nymph and gave him back to me. 

On the way home, I sat in the back seat sort of stunned. My beloved pet was dead, for the sake of knowledge! I quietly sobbed away, wondering what on earth I had been thinking to let that scientist kill Wilbur. But then a miracle happened, and Wilbur began to move around. I cried even more when I realized he was alive after all, though with joy. No one had thought to tell me that the ether was temporary.

I will always remember Mrs. Baltzer’s kindness and her encouragement of my interest in science.  Though I haven’t seen a Wilbur in the wild in years, I found a photo of a katydid nymph online, and it was just as cute as I remembered.