Though the details of the murder escape me, I know how the dead insect is exploited. I can witness the performance any morning, as often as I wish. The Reduvius projects from the clumsy scabbard, crooked like a fore-finger, a delicate black lancet, which is at once a probe and a suction-pump. The [[224]]implement is driven into any point of the victim’s body, provided that it be covered with skin. Then comes absolute immobility; the banqueter does not budge.
Meanwhile the lancets of the sucker are working, sliding one against the other, acting as a pump, imbibing the victim’s life-blood. In like fashion the Cicada drinks the sap of her tree. When she has drained one part of the bark, she moves on and sinks another well. The Reduvius does the same; he drains his prey at several points. He goes from the back of the head to the abdomen, from the abdomen to the neck, from the neck to the thorax and the joints of the legs. Everything is done economically.
I watch with interest the tactics of a Bug exploiting his Locust. Twenty times over I see him changing his point of attack and stopping for a longer or shorter time according to the wealth encountered. He ends up with a haunch, attacked at the joint. The barrel is emptied of its juices until it becomes translucent. If the quarry’s skin is diaphanous, the same degree of exhaustion may be perceived throughout the body. Thanks to the action of the infernal pump, a young [[225]]Praying Mantis an inch long becomes transparent as a moulted skin.
These blood-sucking appetites remind me of our Bed-bug, who makes himself so obnoxious by exploring the sleeper, selecting a convenient spot, leaving it for another and a more profitable, and again moving on, until, swollen to the size of a currant, he withdraws at the first glimmer of daylight. The Reduvius aggravates this method: he first benumbs his victim and then drains it dry. Only the legendary vampire of romance achieves a like degree of frightfulness.
Now, what was the insect-sucker doing in a butcher’s loft? He certainly did not find there the victims which I procure for him: Locusts, young Mantes, Grasshoppers, Chrysomelæ,[4] all lovers of foliage and the sunlight. These passionate lovers of open-air joys would never venture into the dark and nauseating offal-store. What, then, do these black squads clinging to the wall live upon? Such a crowd needs food, and plenty of it. Where is it? [[226]]
In the heap of fats, of course! Here a Dermestes (D. Frischii, KUGEL)[5] swarms promiscuously with her hairy larvæ. The supply is inexhaustible, and it is probably that the Reduvii hastened hither attracted by this abundance. Let us then change the bill of fare, let us substitute Dermestes.
I have just what is needed at my disposal without rushing off to the butcher’s for a supply. In the garden, at this moment, supported on reed tripods, there are certain aerial retting-vats in which Moles, Snakes, Lizards, Toads, Fish and so on attract interminable visits from the undertakers of the neighbourhood. The most numerous is a Dermestes, precisely the same as the one in the tallow-loft. This is the very thing I want.
I serve this Dermestes to my Reduvii, I serve him up lavishly. A frenzied massacre takes place. Every morning the sand in the jar is strewn with corpses, many of which are still lying beneath the murderer’s beak. The conclusion is obvious: the Reduvius kills the Dermestes whenever the opportunity [[227]]occurs; without having an exclusive taste for this sort of game, he bleeds it, more or less eagerly, when he comes across it.
I shall communicate this result to the worthy fellow to whom I owe the ingredients of this story. I shall tell him:
“Leave them alone, the ugly creatures whom you see sleeping on the walls of your loft; don’t drive them away with your broom. They are doing you a service; they wage war upon the others, the Dermestes, who are so destructive to hides.”