Let us turn it over. The beak is monstrous. Its base covers all of the face that is not occupied by the eyes. It is not the usual rostrum, the drill of the sap-sucking Hemiptera; it is a rude implement, an elbowed tool, crooked like a bent forefinger. What can the creature do with this barbarous weapon? When it is feeding I see a black thread, as fine as a hair, issuing from the beak. This is the slender scalpel: the rest is the sheath and the stout handle. This rude equipment tells us that the Reduvius is an executioner.
What sort of exploits can we expect from it? Stabbing and murdering: actions of little interest, because of their frequency. But we must make a considerable allowance for the unexpected; interesting details sometimes lie dormant and spring up suddenly amid squalid surroundings. Perhaps the Reduvius has in store for us facts worthy of record. Let us try to rear him.
His weapon, a stout yataghan, tells us that the Reduvius is a murderer. What victim does he require? This is the rearing [[220]]problem before us. It so happens that some time ago I saw the dingy-looking Bug at grips with the smallest of our Cetoniæ, so well-named the Pall-bearing Cetonia,[2] because of her white spots on a black background. This accidental observation sets me on the right track. I house my flock in a large glass jar with a bed of sand, and as food I serve up the Cetonia aforesaid, which is common in spring on the flowers in the enclosure, but scarce at this time of year. The victim is very readily accepted. Next day I find her dead. One of the Reduvii, with his probe implanted in the joint of the neck, is working at the corpse and draining it dry.
In the absence of Cetoniæ I fall back upon any sort of game suited to the size of my boarders; and I find that any sort answers my purpose, irrespective of the different entomological orders. The usual dish, because it is the easiest for me to capture, consists of Locusts of medium size, though they are sometimes larger than the consumer. Often, too, for the same reason that he is easily obtained, it includes a Forest Bug, [[221]]Pentatoma nigricorna. In short, my charges’ diet does not give me much trouble: anything will do, provided that the prey does not exceed the powers of the assailant.
I was anxious to witness the attack, but I never managed to do so. As the big, prominent eyes of the Reduvius warned me, it takes place at night, at unseasonable hours. However early my inspection, I find the game lifeless, bereft of all power of movement. The hunter is feasting upon his prey and lingers over it for some part of the morning. Then, after many different applications of the probe, now at one point and now at another, when the victims are completely drained of moisture, the blood-suckers abandon the dead bodies, gather into a flock, and do not move all day long, lying flat on the sand at the bottom of the jar. On the following night, if I renew the victuals, the same massacres are repeated.
When the prey is a non-armoured insect, a Locust, for example, I have sometimes noted pulsations in the victim’s abdomen. Death, therefore, is not sudden and overwhelming; nevertheless, the quarry must be very quickly made incapable of resistance. [[222]]
I have confronted the Reduvius with a big-jawed Decticus, a Platycleis[3] five or six times the size of his executioner. Next day the colossus was sucked dry by the dwarf as quickly as a Fly would have been. A terrible stab had paralysed him. Where was the blow delivered and how did it take effect?
There is nothing to tell us that the Reduvius is a bravo versed in the art of murder, acquainted, like the Paralysing Wasps, with the anatomy of his victims and the secrets of their nerve-centres. No doubt he drives his stiletto at random into any part where the skin is soft enough. He kills by injecting venom. His rostrum is a poisoned dagger, like that of the Gnat, but much more virulent.
It is said, indeed, that the Masked Bug’s bite is painful. Wishing myself to test its effects, so that I might speak with authority, I have tried, but in vain, to get myself bitten. When placed on my finger and pestered, the insect refused to unsheath its weapon. Frequent handling of my specimens, without [[223]]the use of tweezers, was no more successful. On the evidence of others, then, and not from my own experience, I believe the Reduvius’ bite to be a serious matter.
It must be so, intended as it is to kill, swiftly an insect that is not always devoid of vigour. To the victim surprised when asleep it must mean the shooting pain and sudden numbness which the Wasp’s sting would produce. The blow is struck here or there, at random. It is possible that the bandit, once the wound has been inflicted, keeps his distance for a while and waits for the limbs to cease kicking before sitting down to devour the corpse. Spiders who have caught a dangerous prey in their webs are wont to take this precaution. They withdraw a little to one side and await the last convulsions of the fettered victim.