About 5 mm of wings are missing. Late in the season most of them tend to have the wings chewed. Seems they mostly do this to one another during mating, while males guard females, etc. Anyway, females do indeed come with long wings, but they are worse at flying than males (meaning they can't fly at all). The long-winged females aren't rare, but they are far outnumbered by those with shorter wings. Occasional shorter-winged males do occur too.

The defensive displays of long-winged individuals seem to be much more impressive than do those of short-winged individuals, but they all hiss fairly well, and sometimes froth a bit from the thorax as well.

My son kept this one as a pet for a few more weeks after I found her in the middle of I-10, until old age finally got her.

On a side note. I'm not sure why this species (and all Taeniopoda, for that matter) aren't included in the genus Romalea. They are close relatives, in fact T. eques and R. microptera are extremely closely related (to the point it could be debated if they are really even different species!). These two can produce healthy hybrid offspring when cross bred (or so a couple of authors claim).