CHAPTER XX
THE FOAMY CICADELLA
In April, when the Swallow and the Cuckoo visit us, let us consider the fields for a while, keeping our eyes on the ground, as befits the eager observer of insect-life. We shall not fail to see, here and there, on the grass, little masses of white foam. It might easily be taken for a spray of frothy spittle from the lips of a passer-by; but there is so much of it that we soon abandon this first idea. Never would human saliva suffice for so lavish an expenditure of foam, even if some one with nothing better to do were to devote all his disgusting and misdirected zeal to the effort.
While recognizing that man is blameless in the matter, the northern peasant has not relinquished the name suggested by the appearance: he calls those strange flakes “Cuckoo-spit,” after the bird whose note is then proclaiming the awakening of spring. [[425]]The vagrant creature, unequal to the toils and delights of housekeeping, ejects it at random, so they say, as it pays its flying visits to the homes of others, in search of a resting-place for its egg.
The interpretation does credit to the Cuckoo’s salivary powers, but not to the interpreter’s intelligence. The other popular denomination is worse still: “Frog-spit!” My dear good people, what on earth has the Frog or his slaver to do with it?[1]
The shrewder Provençal peasant also knows that vernal foam; but he is too cautious to give it any wild names. My rustic neighbours, when I ask them about Cuckoo-spit and Frog-spit, begin to smile and see nothing in those words but a poor joke. To my questions on the nature of the thing they reply:
“I don’t know.”
Exactly! That’s the sort of answer I like, an answer not complicated with grotesque explanations.
Would you know the real perpetrator of this spittle? Rummage about the frothy [[426]]mass with a straw. You will extract a little yellow, pot-bellied, dumpy creature, shaped like a Cicada without wings. That’s the foam-producer.