grep: memory exhausted

[Bill Tangren]

I am occasionally getting the following kernel message:

Sep 19 08:54:02 mach2 kernel: usbhid: probe of 3-2.4:1.1 failed with error -5

I did a grep to find all occurrences of usbhid in the logs, and this is what 
happened:

# cd /var/log
# grep usbhid *
anaconda.syslog:<6>usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
dmesg:usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
grep: memory exhausted

I found this unusual, as I have 2 GB of ram (not a lot these days, but more than 
I've ever had before).

Does anyone know why grep would be exhausting available ram?