Last year, while renovating our garden cottage, I arrived at its front door one morning to find a large locust gracing the door handle. My wife and I had been thinking of using the cottage for AirBnB, our way of travelling the world without actually going anywhere ourselves. However, with so much going on in our lives, that idea was eventually abandoned and the cottage was converted into a games arena.

It’s a year later and again a lone locust has appeared. It so happens that our two sausage dogs love interfering with all sorts of little creatures but when they started trying to play with this new toy, I quickly intervened and caught it.

To keep it out of their reach, I decided to put it in an old bird cage until I could get a gap to take it to the green belt and release it – far away from the juicy new buds and shoots in our neighbourhood gardens. In the meantime, I gave it some leaves and water to keep it alive. It took a few days of watching this large creature with great fascination before I thought to do a bit of research and find out more about it.

Whoopsy. It turns out that it’s known as the Green Milkweed Locust (Phymateus viridipes), also known as the African Bush Grasshopper. While the dorsal area immediately behind its head, (which is covered in carbuncles), and its long oval head, are green – as are the outer wings – the inner wings are bright red and blue, quite striking to watch when it’s in flight.

If you annoy these locusts, they secrete a poisonous fluid from their thoracic joint – so they are not good toys for canine companions.

And here’s another cause for concern – some of the plants that they feed on are highly toxic. According to Wikipedia, all plants of the genus Acokanthera contain toxic cardiac glycosides strong enough to cause death, which is why the sap from these plants is used by traditional Bushmen (Khoisan) for their poison arrows.

The Green Milkweed Locust feeds on Acokanthera oppositiflora and Acokanthera schimperi, both indigenous to Africa, and Cascabela thevetia (also known as yellow oleander) which hails from Central America. Despite the toxicity of these plants, they are often used for hedges.

It’s almost as though these lone visitors were trying to tell me something, so I set out to look for what would attract them to our garden. Lo and behold, I found the source, right at the entrance to our driveway – a very healthy and thriving Acokanthera schimperi, commonly known as a Round-leaved poison-bush.

I put a few young leaves and flowers from this plant into the bird cage and, sure enough, the locust soon tucked in and polished off all the buds and half a leaf. That doesn’t mean that these locusts don’t eat other plants, but they will seek out their favourite sources of food if they are in your garden.

When I eventually found a suitable opportunity to take the bird cage to the green belt up the road, and set the visitor free, of course he simply did what came naturally. Without skipping a beat, he set foot on terra firma and immediately started eating the lush green leaves of the nearest weed!