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Little Busybodies: The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, and Others

<h2>XV</h2> <h3>LEAVING CAMP</h3> At last the day had come, and the children were to leave Camp-in-the-Clouds. They had been there for one whole glorious week of fishing, hunting, camping, picnicing, stories, and sleeping in tents. Betty and Jimmie felt rather sober, for the time for them to go back to the city was drawing near. A week now, and their good times for the summer would be over. Already the leaves were turning a little, and the air growing crisper every day. Indeed, up in Camp-in-the-Clouds they had twice in the early morning to break the ice on the spring in order to get the water, and at night the blankets felt warm and cosey. Betty and Jimmie liked their city home, and after they were once in it they enjoyed their school work, too. They had many friends, entertainments, parties, and made many expeditions to the Zoo and to the parks. But, somehow, the happiest days of all the year came in the summer in Rangeley Village. Every hour seemed precious to them now, and the fingers on Betty's right hand—the number of days that were left—were all too few. Even Jimmie, who cared less for the country than Betty did, was sorry. And the children were sorry to have them go. All through the cold, white winter in Rangeley Village they were expecting the Reece children and the old guide. With their coming, good times began again. And this morning, on which they were leaving camp, they felt rather blue, for, although they expected to come back the next summer, as indeed they did, yet it seemed such a long, long time to wait! They followed Ben Gile single file down the mountain at a good pace, but without saying very much. By noon they had reached the Dead River Ponds, and were ready for luncheon. "I think some of that birch, Tom," said Ben Gile, "would make a good fire for us." <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-155.jpg" alt="wasps" title="" /> A. Feeding the baby wasps. B. A grown-up wasp. </div> Tom, who was a famous woodchopper in winter, went off toward the tree, followed by lazy little Peter, who loved to see others work. Soon the chips were flying right and left. Suddenly there was a yell from Peter. Tom dropped his axe. Ben Gile hurried over to the boy, and the others crowded around. Tom was sure a splinter had gone into Peter's eye. The lad was holding on to his eye, and jumping up and down with pain. But as Ben Gile was trying to make the boy take his hand away, Tom exclaimed, grabbed one hand with the other, and made for the pond. "It's hornets, Ben!" he called; and before the others could say anything he had clapped some mud on his own hand and brought mud for Peter's eye, which he poulticed with this useful material, and tied around it a big white handkerchief. Although Peter did not in the least like the bite, yet he felt rather proud of the bandage, and for the first time in his life he, too, wanted to know about the creatures who could give so much pain. "Tell us, sir," the children cried, "about the wasps while dinner is cooking." So Ben Gile, who had left the cooking to the other guides, gathered the children and Mrs. Reece about him, and began: "One day last fall I saw, high up in a tree near the pond, the pretty, gray nest of Mrs. Vespa-Wasp. It did not look like a real house, with windows in it and steps leading up to it. But there it hung, swinging in the bare branches, its walls of pretty, soft gray blending so beautifully with the pale-blue sky. "I wondered whether any of the wasp family was at home, but the house was too high for me to reach, so I went away to find a long pole with which to knock. With my long pole I knocked gently at first, then louder and louder, but no one stirred within. So I poked harder, trying to break off a strong branch which ran straight through the top of the house. At last it broke off, and down came the gray house almost into my arms. "It was big and round, like a Japanese lantern. Guess of what it was made? Just paper. But not our kind of paper; it was wasp-paper. Mrs. Vespa and her family make this paper out of wood-pulp, which they get by scraping off the weathered wood from trees and fences. Of course this old wood is of various colors, but that makes the house so much the prettier. One wasp comes back with its burden of woody pulp rolled up in a little pellet. This it takes and spreads in thin ribbons along the edge of the wall which is being made. Perhaps this edge is dark gray. Then off it flies for more material, while another takes its place with a pellet of light gray, which is soon skilfully moulded on to the edge. Sometimes the outer wall consists of several layers of this wasp-paper, which is strong and waterproof. Within the wall are many stories of cone, built like different floors in our own houses. "Early in the spring Mrs. Vespa-Wasp, who has been passing the cold winter days tucked away in a warm crevice somewhere, comes out and finds a site for her summer home. She begins this as a very small and simple one, starting with just a few rooms fastened to the branch of a tree. Here she lays an egg in each little room, then brings in food for the new baby wasps which are in the making. The kind of food which is stored away depends upon the kind of wasps. Some like beetles, some spiders, some caterpillars, and others grasshoppers and cicadas. "As in the bee family, the first children are all workers, because Mrs. Vespa-Wasp needs assistance in building up the home and feeding the children. This first home is small, not nearly large enough for the growing family, so new rooms must be built at once. These are added on to the first ones until there is a good-sized layer of them. If Mrs. Wasp should go on making this upper story larger and larger, it would be buffeted about by the wind and rain, and perhaps broken. So the family starts a second story under the first. On the under side of the top floor some of the cells are broken away and a stem is made to start the next floor, and so on, until there are four or five combs in the house. They are always building the house over, tearing down the walls to make room for new floors; but this does not make the house unsafe in the mean time, as the walls are not connected with the floors, but form a loose envelope about them. "Later in the season, after the family has become very large, some of the upper cells are torn out, making a nice, warm attic, where the family may go to keep out of the wind and rain. They dislike the cold and wet very much. "I carried this big house to my cabin with me, so that I might look it over and see just how it was arranged. Very carefully I cut away a little of the outer wall until I had a place large enough to look through. Guess what I saw lying cuddled down in many of these rooms? Little, soft, white baby wasps. When the Vespa family are grown up they are called hornets, and Peter and Tom know how hornets sting! I was not afraid of the babies, but was not sure that all the old wasps were out. It was a cold day, and wasps get stiff very quickly, so I watched carefully to see whether the warm air of the room would not limber up some stiff joints which were perhaps in hiding up-stairs in the house. Sure enough, in a few moments out crawled a worker, looking quite dazed and sheepish at the change in temperature. I did not wait for it to become thoroughly awake, but picked it up with the forceps and put it out of the window. I was kept busy, for twenty-five old fellows walked out, thinking, no doubt, that they had made a mistake in the season, and that it was not time, after all, for them to die. All the wasp family, except the queens, expect to die, and do die in the autumn. "I could not find either flies or spiders for the babies, and even if there had been a few about I could not have used them, as there was no worker wasp to chew them soft and fine for them. So I made a nice, appetizing syrup of sugar and water, and found that young wasps were as eager for sweets as little children are. They worked their baby mouths busily as long as I had the patience to feed them. When the Vespa family are grown up they eat honey dew from the little aphids, fruit juice, and the nectar from flowers, or, if fortune favors them, they may gain entrance to Mrs. Honey-Bee's home, and feast from her well-filled honeycombs. But the babies all eat insects which their mothers put in the little rooms beside the eggs. "Mrs. Polistes is a cousin of Mrs. Vespa. She is long and slender, while Mrs. Vespa is rather broad. Her house is a much simpler affair. It has just one layer of rooms suspended by a stem from the under side of a porch, or maybe the eaves, of a house." "Are there solitary wasps," asked Jimmie, "just as there are solitary bees?" "Many wasps prefer to live alone rather than in a big house with hundreds of others. They are like bees in their cleverness, knowing how to tunnel in wood, dig deep pits in the ground, or make nests of mud. Mr. Kellogg, a very wise man, and young to be so wise, tells of one interesting little wasp, called the thread-waisted sand-digger, which lives in California in the salt-marshes. These marshes are covered by plants, but in between are little smooth places covered with a glistening crust of salt. It is in these open spots that Mrs. Sand-Digger makes her home. She has strong jaws, and with these she cuts out a neat little circle of salty crust. Then she begins to dig a tunnel, humming away to herself all the time. After the hole is ready she very carefully backs out of it and puts a circular door on. "Then she flies away to find food to store up for her children. These babies like tender, green inch-worms, so Mrs. Digger-Wasp hunts around until she finds a fat one, and then proceeds to paralyze it, so that it will stay quietly in the house until the babies are ready to eat it, for baby digger-wasps are little cannibals, preferring living caterpillars to any pre-digested spiders or flies. It is very wonderful that Mrs. Digger-Wasp knows where to sting a caterpillar in order to paralyze it and yet not kill it. But she does. Perhaps you remember that insects have knots of nerve cells, connected by nerve threads, extending from one end of the body to the other? Jimmie remembers that I pinched him to illustrate this point. The knot on the top of the food-tubes is the brain, then underneath there are usually three in the thorax and several in the abdomen. Well, Mrs. Digger-Wasp stings one or more of these little knots, which we call ganglia. That paralyzes the young inch-worm, so that it becomes limp and helpless, but still lives. Then Mrs. Wasp picks it up and carries it to her house, and packs it in the bottom of the tunnel. "After putting in five or ten she lays an egg, fastening it on the body of one of the worms. She backs out of the tunnel, and flies off to collect balls of dirt. With these she fills up the tunnel completely. Carefully she puts the little round door on. One day some one saw her do a curious thing. She wished to be very sure that the door was fast shut. Perhaps it did not fit well. So she found a tiny pebble, held it in her jaws, and hammered the door down with it. Wasn't that a clever thing for a wasp to do? The door closed, this is all the attention she gives to baby digger-wasps. She has put in plenty of food, even for the hungriest larva. Now it must look out for itself, eat, grow fat and strong, and then dig its way out into the salt-marsh. "Mrs. Eumenes is a good-looking little wasp dressed in black and yellow. She is a mason, making a pretty mud vase for a home. The clay, or mud, she moistens, then moulds it, little by little, into the vase, which she fastens on to a twig. Some mud-daubers make small cylinders placed side by side. Into these they put stung spiders, after tearing off their legs to make sure they will not recover and run away before the eggs hatch. Sometimes the mud-daubers plaster up the keyholes in a house, and so have snug homes. "One day last summer, as I was sitting outside my cabin, I noticed a wasp carrying something green in its mouth. It came close to my head, then finally crawled up under the shingles on the side wall. All the afternoon it came and went, each time bringing something green. The next afternoon I was loading my guns, and had put a hollow gun-barrel on a table at my side. Soon I heard a whir of insect wings, and there, on the table, was my wasp friend. It walked up and down, examining very carefully the hollow barrel, then cautiously it crawled in. In about five minutes it crawled out again and flew away. Soon it was back with a piece of green in its mouth. It crawled into the barrel and left the green. Six times the wasp did this; then my curiosity became so great I could wait no longer. When she flew away I tapped the barrel on the table and emptied out six little green worms, all limp and still. But Mrs. Wasp was back again, and I guiltily withdrew. She had brought the seventh worm, and when she saw the six lying on the table she was much puzzled. She went around and poked each one to see whether it was limp, fearing, perhaps, that she had not stung them hard enough; but, finding them helpless, she picked them up one by one and patiently carried them back into the gun-barrel. Three times I emptied them out, and three times she put them back, then flew away, never to return. I suppose the last time she went in she laid the egg among the little worms, and then, her duty done, was off to find another good place to start a family. "Have you ever seen a big cicada which makes the long, rasping sound in the trees? Some wasps like these very much for food. So, when cicada sings, Mrs. Wasp swoops down on it, stings it, and then, big and clumsy as it is, carries it to her home for her children to feast upon." "A cicada is three or four times as large as a wasp, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Reece. "Yes; but there is nothing the wasps can't do," replied Ben Gile. "I should think not!" exclaimed Peter, who by this time was able to smile again. "The trout are ready, Ben," said Adam, "and everything else, too, I guess." With running and laughter the children were soon about the fire, eating their last delicious out-of-door dinner. <hr class="major" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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