THE STORY OF SOME BLACK BUGS.
We were going to visit Aunt Bessie, and John and I like few things better than that. To begin with, she lives in the country, and there is always so much to do in the way of fun that the days never seem half long enough.
Then, besides, Aunt Bessie knows everything, and can tell such famous stories. So when she asked us one morning to go to the pond with her and see something interesting, you may be sure we were not slow in following her.
The rushes grew thickly along the sides, but the water was clear, and we could plainly see the black bugs she pointed out to us crawling, slowly and clumsily, over the muddy bottom.
“Those things!” said John, not a little disgusted. “I don’t think they are much. Are they tadpoles?”
“Tadpoles!” I echoed. “Why, whoever saw tadpoles with six legs and no tail?”
“The absence of a tail is very convincing,” laughed Aunt Bessie. “They are certainly not tadpoles. Now watch them closely, please, and tell me all about them.”
“They are abominably ugly. That is one thing,” broke in John. “They look black, and have six legs. But how funny their skin is. More like a crust, or lots of crusts laid one on the other. They are about the stupidest things I ever saw. They seem to do nothing but crawl over that mud and—Hello! they aren’t so stupid, after all. Did you see that fellow snatch a poor fly and gobble him up quicker than you could say Jack Robinson? And there’s another taken a mosquito just as quick. I’ll take back what I said about the slow business. But really, Auntie, do you think them very interesting?”
“I’ll ask you that question when you have learned something more about them,” was her answer. “Tell me now what you think of that Dragon-fly darting over the water?”
“Oh, he is a beauty,” we answered in a breath. “But please let us hear something about those things down there.”
“Not to-day, boys. I wish you to see something for yourselves first. Watch here for a few days and your patience will be rewarded, I promise you. Then I will have a story to tell you.”
I knew that Auntie never spoke without reason, so John and I kept a close watch on those bugs. For two days nothing happened. The old things just crawled over the mud or ate flies and mosquitoes, as usual.
But the third day one big fellow decided to try something new. It was nothing less than to creep up the stem of one of the rushes. I suppose it was hard work, for he took a long time to get to the surface of the water. Here he stopped a while and then seemed to make up his mind to go further. Soon he was quite out of the water and could breathe all the air and sunshine he wished. I believe he did not like it very well. He seemed so restless and uneasy. I was expecting to see him go back, when I heard John cry out:
“Look! oh, do look!”
I did look, and could scarcely believe my eyes.
His skin (the bug’s, I mean), was actually cracking right down the back, just as though the air and sunshine had dried it too much.
Poor fellow, he seemed in great trouble about it. Then, to make matters worse, a part of his coat broke off at the top and slipped down over his eyes, so that he could not see. After a moment, however, it dropped further, quite under the place where his chin would have been, had he had a chin.
“Oh! he is getting a new face. A prettier one, too, I am glad to say.”
It seemed as if John was always first to notice things, for it was just as he said; as the old face slipped away a new one came in its place.
I guess that by this time that old bug was as much astonished as we were. He was wriggling about in a very strange fashion, and at last quite wriggled himself out of his old shell. Then we saw two pairs of wings, which must have been folded away in little cases by his side, begin to open like fans. Next, he stretched his legs, and it was easy to see that they were longer and more beautiful than those he had had before.
Then, before we could admire his slender, graceful body, or fully realize the wonderful change that had occurred in him, he darted away before our astonished eyes, not a black bug, but a beautiful Dragon-fly.
“Hurrah!” we both shouted. The next second we were rushing at top speed to tell Auntie all about it; just as though she had not known all along what was going to happen.
She listened and then told us what we did not know.
How months before the mother Dragon-fly had dropped her tiny eggs in the water, where they hatched out the black bugs, which were so unlike their mother that she did not know them for her children, and had no word to say to them during the long hours she spent in skimming over the water where they lived.
These bugs were content at first to live in the mud. But soon came the longing for sun and air. And then followed the wonderful transformation from an ugly black bug to the beautiful dragon-fly.
If you will go beside some pond in the spring or early summer, and find among the water grasses such a bug as I have described, and will then watch long enough you will see just what John and I saw. Afterwards I am sure you will agree with us that it is very wonderful indeed.
Louise Jamison.