"Are there solitary wasps," asked Jimmie, "just as there are solitary bees?"
"Many wasps prefer to live alone rather than in a big house with hundreds of others. They are like bees in their cleverness, knowing how to tunnel in wood, dig deep pits in the ground, or make nests of mud. Mr. Kellogg, a very wise man, and young to be so wise, tells of one interesting little wasp, called the thread-waisted sand-digger, which lives in California in the salt-marshes. These marshes are covered by plants, but in between are little smooth places covered with a glistening crust of salt. It is in these open spots that Mrs. Sand-Digger makes her home. She has strong jaws, and with these she cuts out a neat little circle of salty crust. Then she begins to dig a tunnel, humming away to herself all the time. After the hole is ready she very carefully backs out of it and puts a circular door on.
"Then she flies away to find food to store up for her children. These babies like tender, green inch-worms, so Mrs. Digger-Wasp hunts around until she finds a fat one, and then proceeds to paralyze it, so that it will stay quietly in the house until the babies are ready to eat it, for baby digger-wasps are little cannibals, preferring living caterpillars to any pre-digested spiders or flies. It is very wonderful that Mrs. Digger-Wasp knows where to sting a caterpillar in order to paralyze it and yet not kill it. But she does. Perhaps you remember that insects have knots of nerve cells, connected by nerve threads, extending from one end of the body to the other? Jimmie remembers that I pinched him to illustrate this point. The knot on the top of the food-tubes is the brain, then underneath there are usually three in the thorax and several in the abdomen. Well, Mrs. Digger-Wasp stings one or more of these little knots, which we call ganglia. That paralyzes the young inch-worm, so that it becomes limp and helpless, but still lives. Then Mrs. Wasp picks it up and carries it to her house, and packs it in the bottom of the tunnel.
"After putting in five or ten she lays an egg, fastening it on the body of one of the worms. She backs out of the tunnel, and flies off to collect balls of dirt. With these she fills up the tunnel completely. Carefully she puts the little round door on. One day some one saw her do a curious thing. She wished to be very sure that the door was fast shut. Perhaps it did not fit well. So she found a tiny pebble, held it in her jaws, and hammered the door down with it. Wasn't that a clever thing for a wasp to do? The door closed, this is all the attention she gives to baby digger-wasps. She has put in plenty of food, even for the hungriest larva. Now it must look out for itself, eat, grow fat and strong, and then dig its way out into the salt-marsh.
"Mrs. Eumenes is a good-looking little wasp dressed in black and yellow. She is a mason, making a pretty mud vase for a home. The clay, or mud, she moistens, then moulds it, little by little, into the vase, which she fastens on to a twig. Some mud-daubers make small cylinders placed side by side. Into these they put stung spiders, after tearing off their legs to make sure they will not recover and run away before the eggs hatch. Sometimes the mud-daubers plaster up the keyholes in a house, and so have snug homes.
"One day last summer, as I was sitting outside my cabin, I noticed a wasp carrying something green in its mouth. It came close to my head, then finally crawled up under the shingles on the side wall. All the afternoon it came and went, each time bringing something green. The next afternoon I was loading my guns, and had put a hollow gun-barrel on a table at my side. Soon I heard a whir of insect wings, and there, on the table, was my wasp friend. It walked up and down, examining very carefully the hollow barrel, then cautiously it crawled in. In about five minutes it crawled out again and flew away. Soon it was back with a piece of green in its mouth. It crawled into the barrel and left the green. Six times the wasp did this; then my curiosity became so great I could wait no longer. When she flew away I tapped the barrel on the table and emptied out six little green worms, all limp and still. But Mrs. Wasp was back again, and I guiltily withdrew. She had brought the seventh worm, and when she saw the six lying on the table she was much puzzled. She went around and poked each one to see whether it was limp, fearing, perhaps, that she had not stung them hard enough; but, finding them helpless, she picked them up one by one and patiently carried them back into the gun-barrel. Three times I emptied them out, and three times she put them back, then flew away, never to return. I suppose the last time she went in she laid the egg among the little worms, and then, her duty done, was off to find another good place to start a family.
"Have you ever seen a big cicada which makes the long, rasping sound in the trees? Some wasps like these very much for food. So, when cicada sings, Mrs. Wasp swoops down on it, stings it, and then, big and clumsy as it is, carries it to her home for her children to feast upon."
"A cicada is three or four times as large as a wasp, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Reece.
"Yes; but there is nothing the wasps can't do," replied Ben Gile.
"I should think not!" exclaimed Peter, who by this time was able to smile again.