Bugs are terrifying. Even when you were a kid and collected snails in an old fish tank filled with dirt and plants (what, just me?) they were purely to look at and marvel over, not to – you know – actually touch with your hands.
Except that’s exactly what someone made this poor ball kid do at the Australian Open this week.
We don’t have much info besides knowing those hands belong to a ball kid who was working on Jan 19th at the Australian Open. Getty doesn’t even know what that bug is. They just called it a “bug”.
I say it’s a cockroach, literally everyone else in the office says it’s a grasshopper.
To that I say – does it fucking MATTER? They’re both terrible bugs. Awful. Bad buggos that are yucky and I never, ever want to touch my skin.
And some poor kid’s scooping that fucker up. Just scooping it’s spindly rough legs into his/her little hands. I could almost cry, this is so traumatic to me.
After a bit of research I’ve learnt this isn’t a new sacrifice ball kids have to make. Here’s a ball girl in slo-mo removing a bug from a court back in 2015.
And then in a Nadal/Chardy match the same year in Cincinnati, a ball kid (well, he’s more of a teenager tbh) absolutely SLAUGHTERED a huge moth.
So I guess it’s part of their job. Just seems spectacularly rude and cruel to force kids to herd bugs off courts with their hands.
Once again, the unsung heroes – the ball kids.