Book of Monsters Part 7

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THE a.s.sa.s.sIN BUG

(_Pselliopus cinctus_, Fab.)

The human species puts its a.s.sa.s.sins into striped clothing and it is a rather curious coincidence to find in the insect world an a.s.sa.s.sin bug in convict's stripes.

I think no visitor to our portrait gallery has seen a more fantastic being than this little bow-legged beast. Until I found out what he was, I could not understand his rank impertinence, for he stalked leisurely about as though afraid of nothing.

I wonder if he has a nasty flavor and advertises the fact by his curious coat.

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AN a.s.sa.s.sINATION

(_Pselliopus cinctus_, Fab.)

I once took a photograph, without realizing it, of some Arab women at the gates of Bagdad, trying to a.s.sa.s.sinate an old man; and I cannot pa.s.s the picture in my alb.u.m without shuddering.

This photograph affects me in the same way, for it, too, is of a real tragedy and portrays the death of a ladybird, one of the few friends man has in the whole order of beetles, and that, too, at the hands of a member of the order of bugs, the most destructive order of our insect pests.

It must be admitted that, as things go in Nature, the ladybird has met her just fate, for she has spent her life devouring bugs, the sucking aphids and scale insects of our rose bushes and cherry trees. Somehow the old nursery rhyme of

"Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home, Your house is on fire, your children will burn,"

seems to have endeared to us all this beneficent little beetle which wanders everywhere, cutting short the lives of the sap-sucking insects that deform and injure our plants, and it does not seem to matter that this particular a.s.sa.s.sin bug preys upon our enemies as well as on our friends. To find this convict striped, spiny bug, with its beak buried to the base in the vitals of the ladybird, and realize that it had first poisoned its victim with poison saliva and was now sucking its blood, rouses a peculiar feeling of hatred towards this hideously ugly creature.

Perhaps this is heightened by the contrast between the pretty, trim form of the ladybird and the ugliness of the a.s.sa.s.sin bug.

I was puzzled to know how a creature so nearly armor-clad could be successfully attacked by a soft-bodied bug of such deliberate habits of movement. How the start is made I do not know, but it is evident that between the base of the wing covers of the ladybird and her neck or thorax is a weak spot in her armor and the a.s.sa.s.sin thrusts his beak into this crack.

There are members of this a.s.sa.s.sin bug cla.s.s which do not hesitate to attack little children in the South, and produce nasty wounds with their poisoned beaks.

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THE CICADA

(_Cicada sayi_, Grossb.)

The coming of the swallow is scarcely more significant to Americans of the Southern states than the arrival of the cicada. Its song is the noisiest song in the insect world, and is made in a curious way, by the stretching and relaxing of a corrugated drum-like membrane in the side of the abdomen by means of specially strong muscles. The sound is controlled in rhythmic cadences by means of semicircular discs or covers to the drums, which can be closed and opened at the will of the insect.

This noisy song, which the male alone can sing, he doubtless sings for his mate and not for us, although entomologists are not agreed as to how his partner hears his song, as she seems to have no ears. Although this is the photograph of a two-year cicada the story can be told here of that weirdest of all the insects,--the Rip Van Winkle of the insect world, as David Sharp has called it,--the seventeen-year cicada.

From a tiny egg laid by its mother in a twig of your back-yard shrubbery there issues a creature which is as unlike this monster as it can be, with soft, white body and mole-like front legs. It hurries to the ground and disappears beneath its surface sometimes to a depth of a hundred times its length--twenty feet it is said. For seventeen years it digs its way around in the absolute darkness of this underworld, and then, as though by some prearranged agreement, it comes to the surface to join in a marriage revelry of a few brief weeks in summer with its kinsmen of the same generation who disappeared as it did into the darkness seventeen years before.

Most insects live for a few months only, and one, indeed, the male at least, for only fifteen or twenty minutes; but the seventeen-year cicada, the oldest of the insect world, lives as long as a cat or dog. But what a life! Seventeen years of it in the dark and a few weeks in the sunlight.

And yet, compared to the life of an angleworm, condemned to the darkness forever, what an interesting career!

When the cicada's shrill song disturbs you, then remember how brief is the pleasure of its existence.

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THE AMBUSH BUG

(_Phymata pennsylvanica_, Handl.)

We are personally so afraid of a bee's sting that it is hard for us to believe that any mere bug exists which is strong enough to overcome and kill a wasp or honey bee. A look at the thick armor of this creature and its powerful, black pointed beak will go a long way towards convincing one that this may be such a bug; it has a close relative, anyway, which does so. Its front legs have been developed into enormously strong claws with which to catch and hold its prey.

It lurks in flowers and preys on honey-sucking insects, and one can easily imagine the unequal struggle between it and a b.u.t.terfly, or realize that it might come off victor in a fight with bees or wasps.

There are such romantic scenes and bloodcurdling spectacles to be observed in this world of insects that I cannot understand why there are so few who, having ample time, have not the patience to sit and watch them as Fabre and others less well known have done.

No schoolroom training in observation can compare in value with the outdoor observations of living insects. To look and wait and think and try to understand; what habits of observation, perseverance and reflection these actions cultivate!

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A BUG THAT IS ALWAYS WALKING AROUND

(_Brochymena arborea_, Say)

No photograph in the collection ill.u.s.trates better the marvelous variety of form which abounds in the jungle of our back yards. To the naked eye all the interesting details are invisible and one's hand instinctively brushes the intruder from the table where it has crawled in to take a look at a human being.

The spotted, crablike legs, covered with bristles, the beadlike facet eyes, the oyster sh.e.l.l shaped body, the moving antennae all covered with white scales, the curious trunk or sucking pipe descending from the chin, give to the creature a personality which combines something of the wistful with the curious. And yet this is, as my friend Dr. Schwartz says, "just one of those bugs that is always walking around on our plants and n.o.body seems to know just what it is doing."

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THE TARNISHED PLANT BUG

(_Lygus pratensis_, Linn.)

If you have ever carefully tended young vegetable plants, set them out by hand and watched over them, you will certainly have made the acquaintance of this vicious little creature a quarter of an inch long. At least you will have found where he drove his proboscis and sucked the juices from your tender plant, leaving his irritating fluids behind to distort the tissues of the leaf or bud. He lives in the rubbish which was left littering up the garden and is waiting now for spring to come when he will make his appearance and do whatever damage is necessary for his existence.

You cannot spray him with kerosene for he is too agile, skipping away from you in the sunlight, but when his mate lays her eggs, and the young nymphs with wingless bodies crawl about, you can kill them with a dose of kerosene oil emulsion which will close their breathing pores and suffocate them.

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THE LANTERN FLY BUG

(_Helicoptera variegata_, Van D.)

This creature belongs to the family of lantern flies and is also related to the little leaf hoppers which one startles from the gra.s.s by the hundred in walking across a lawn or meadow.

It is a small, grey bug, not a quarter of an inch long, and quite insignificant when looked at with the naked eye, yet it is quite as strange in form as any of the prehistoric monsters.