“thou art welcome to the town, but why come here
to bleed a fellow poet gaunt like thee?
alas! the little blood i have is dear,
and thin will be the banquet drawn from me.”
—bryant.
“that horrid mosquito,” said ruth, waking with a start, and slapping her cheek.
“aha! you didn’t get me that time,” answered a thin, high-pitched voice!
ruth sat up. she had been asleep under the apple tree, but she was quite awake now.
“where are you?” she asked, “and are you really talking?”
“i seem to be,” answered the mosquito, “though you tried to finish me just now. i bear no ill-will, though. i am quite used to being an outlaw. what is more, i don’t intend to be any better. i shall go on biting people as much as i please. i must have my meals as well as the rest of the world. people seem to forget that fact.”
“but just biting people——” began ruth.
“it isn’t just biting,” put in the mosquito. “it really isn’t biting at all. i have a sharp little instrument to pierce the skin of the fellow i choose for my dinner, and the best kind of sucking pump to pump up his blood. that’s the way i get my meals. it is different with my mate. he is a harmless sort of fellow. he can’t even sing, and he likes such baby food as the nectar of flowers. now tell me why i am different from other insect musicians.”
she fixed her big eyes on ruth, who moved uneasily, and answered with not a little hesitation:
“i—i—really don’t know.”
53“i’m a female. that’s why. in all the orders, so far as i know, the singers are males. naturally i am proud of being an exception. well, you didn’t know that. do you know why i don’t care for science?”
“it is just like an examination,” thought ruth, and again she answered.
“i don’t know.”
“of course you don’t,” said mrs. mosquito. “is there anything you do know? well, i suppose i must tell you. i don’t care for science, because it interferes too much. once upon a time men were our friends. we not only had nice juicy meals from them, but we had their rain barrels as nurseries for our children. of course, what they said about us, when we came too near them, was not always complimentary, but a mosquito, attending strictly to business, doesn’t mind a little thing like that. but now come these fellows who know so much, or think they know so much. we carry malaria, they say, whatever that is, and the rain barrel must go, because it helps to breed mosquitoes. not only that, these interfering fellows seem to spend their time thinking up ways to finish us. well, i sting them every chance i get.”
“but alas! the rain barrel is going. i was hatched in one of the few to be found in these sad days. i was a lively baby, i can tell you. young mosquitoes are called wrigglers and, true to my name, i wriggled for all i was worth. now, when you know that my mother had laid something like three hundred eggs, and all had hatched into wrigglers as lively as myself, you can imagine the time there was in that old rain barrel.”
“but why,” asked ruth “are you called wrigglers when you are young, and mosquitoes when you are grown up?”
“why are you called baby when you are born, girl when you are half grown, and woman when you are quite grown?” replied mrs. mosquito, and ruth said no more.
“now,” went on mrs. mosquito, “i should like to tell you more about wrigglers, how 55they stand on their heads and breathe with their tails, and how they shed their skins when they become full-grown mosquitoes, but i haven’t time. the others are coming.”
“others?” repeated ruth. “what others?”
“the members of the diptera order of course,” answered mrs. mosquito, with an important air. “you see, i found you sleeping under the tree and i knew you wanted to learn about the things that are worth while, and as we are very worth while, i sent a friend to tell all the members of our order to meet in this spot.”
“exactly what that young mosquito told me,” said mrs. hessian fly, buzzing up excitedly.
she was a dusky-winged creature, scarcely more than an eighth of an inch long.
“what is the diptera anyhow?”
“why, you are one,” explained mrs. mosquito, with a superior smile. “it is quite a tax to know things for everybody,” she said to ruth, “but you see i am around men so much i learn a great deal. i once attended a meeting of the men who think themselves wise. i wasn’t invited, you understand, but i went, and i attracted much attention too. well, this is what i heard: the audience will please listen, it concerns you all:
“‘the members of the order diptera have two gauzy wings and two thread-like organs with knobs at the end in the place where most other insects have a second pair of wings. their mouth is framed for sucking, and sometimes for piercing. only a few make cocoons. their larvæ are called maggots, and they have no legs. some are vegetable eaters, some carnivorous, and many are scavengers.’ they said all that about us, and maybe it’s true, but i tell you every man in that meeting felt my sting.”
“i don’t care what they say,” remarked mrs. hessian fly. “to be talked about shows our importance, though i have never doubted mine. my family is a revolutionary one, as my ancestors came over with the hessians. of course you have heard of them?”
“no, i am only interested in the people who live now,” answered mrs. mosquito.
“well, i live now,” said mrs. hessian fly, “and i am interesting enough for any use. i don’t make galls like so many flies, but simply lay my eggs in young blades of wheat, and when my little red babies hatch, they have only to crawl down and fasten themselves to the tender stalk, just below the ground. don’t they love the sap, though? a field of wheat looks pretty sick after they have worked on it a while. sometimes the wheat midges help them and then it is good-by to the wheat. mrs. wheat midge, you know, lays her eggs in the opening flower of the grain, and her babies eat the pollen and ovule. you may guess what happens then.”
“i think it is real horrid to do that,” said ruth.
“and what do you know about it, pray?” 58retorted mrs. hessian fly. “we must all eat to live.”
“we certainly must,” said a house fly, flitting up with a loud buzz. “i have just escaped with my life. a cook wanted to take it because i tried to lay some eggs on her meat. what better place could a fly ask, i’d like to know? if mrs. blow fly had been there, she would have put her eggs on that meat, screen or no screen. she is a most determined body and she can drop her eggs through the finest mesh, if she makes up her mind to do it.”
“is mrs. blow fly that big, buzzing, blue-bodied thing that is such a botheration?” asked ruth.
“she’s big and blue, and she buzzes, or talks, with her wings, as we all do,” answered mrs. house fly, with dignity, “but she isn’t a thing. she’s a fly. there are hundreds of different kinds of flies, i’d like you to understand. the kind like me live in houses, but some prefer stables. they seem to like 59to stay with horses and cows, and are rather common. they have beautiful eyes, though, and plenty of them. would you believe it, my head is nearly all eyes? i have thousands of tiny ones in my two big ones, not to mention the three single ones at the top of my head.”
“gracious!” said ruth. “no wonder it is so hard to catch you. but doesn’t it make you dizzy when you walk upside down, and how do you keep from falling?”
“of course we don’t get dizzy and it is easy enough to keep from falling if you have pads and fine hairs on your feet. they just hold you to the place you are standing on. men seem to consider this quite a wonderful thing. one of them has written some poetry about it. this is how it goes:
“what a wonderful fellow is mr. fly,
he goes where he pleases, low or high,
and can walk just as well with his feet to the sky
as i can on the floor.”
“say,” spoke up a slim, narrow-winged creature with abnormally long legs, “i’m one of your relations, though i can’t walk upside down.”
“you?” repeated mrs. house fly, contemptuously. “why, you can’t walk decently right side up.”
“it is true,” sighed the crane fly. “i haven’t even the grace of daddy long legs, for:
“my six long legs all here and there
oppress my bosom with despair.”
“well, i don’t care about your legs,” said mrs. house fly. “i was speaking of my relations—my smart relations. all are not smart. i have some who need only bite the twig of a tree and lay their eggs there, and what do you suppose happens? a round ball grows over the spot and men call it a gall, but it is really a tiny house for my cousin’s babies. i have another cousin, whose name is cecidomyia strobiloides. it is long for such a tiny creature, but she bears up very well under it.”
“i couldn’t ever pronounce it,” said ruth. “what does she do, please?”
“she flies to a willow tree in the spring, before the leaves are out, and with a spear on the end of her body she cuts a gash in the tip end of the bud, just where it is most tender and juicy. she lays an egg in the gash; then goes to another twig, and does the same thing, until she has laid as many eggs as she wishes. when her babies hatch, they do not look at all like their gauzy-winged little gray mother, nor do they care for sun or air. in fact, they never stir from their cells. they can eat, though, and the sap of the tree is their food.”
“you all seem to think a good deal of eating,” said ruth.
“of course. isn’t that what we are hatched for? but my cousin’s babies have lost their appetites by the fall, and then they go to sleep. they wake up in the spring, and, strange to say, they have grown exactly like their mother and are ready to lay eggs on some more willow twigs. very likely the willow tree does not care to have them do it, 62for the twig where their cradle is does not grow into a branch as the tree meant it should. instead, the small leaves just crowd upon each other, until they look like a green pine cone.”
“i hope it will never happen to my willow tree,” said ruth; “but please tell me more things. they are very interesting.”
“interesting? i should say so. indeed, i could go on talking all day, and not tell you one half the things we can do. but life is too uncertain to waste it all in talking.”
“life is certainly full of accidents,” buzzed a big horse fly. “i’m here to tell mrs. mosquito, if she is looking for the messenger she sent out a while ago, she’d better make up her mind never to see her again. she went too near a horrid warty toad, and you can guess the rest.”
“we can,” sighed mrs. mosquito. “if it isn’t frogs, it’s toads and——”
“often it’s birds,” finished mrs. horse fly, “and they are the worst of all.”
“such subjects remind me that i am hungry,” said mrs. mosquito, “and i’m off to find a juicy somebody for dinner. i think i shall lay some eggs too.”
“i wonder if it was my toad who ate that mosquito,” thought ruth, as she watched the audience fly away.
