Short hop in 2007

Will you catch a jumping bean this year?

Brincadores, commonly called Mexican jumping beans, may be in short supply this year. According to owner Oz Svehaug, of www.jumpingbeansrus.com in Chula Vista, Calif., the selling season has nearly run its course. “You buy the beans and sell them as fast as you can,” Svehaug says. Even so, jumping bean purveyors usually sell for several months, but because there was little rain in the spring, the off-pattern weather impacted the crop. The “bean” (actually a small, thin-walled section of a seed capsule from a deciduous shrub) contains the larva of a small gray moth. After eating the seed, the larva hurls itself from one wall to the other, causing the seed to “jump.”