These eggs soon turn to worms or grubs, and so spoil the meat. To keep the meat from the flies the cook puts a cover over it. The cover is often made of wire net.
“Now,” says the cook, “I can keep away that dirty fly.”
But Mrs. Fly says, “Oh, can you, Mrs. Cook? We will see about that.”
So Mrs. Fly sits on top of the wire cover. She puts her little egg tube through one of the fine holes in the net. She drops egg after egg from the tube. The eggs fall right on the meat, just where Mrs. Fly wishes them to be.
Then the cook cries out, “How ever did that fly get to my meat?”
Is it not strange that Mrs. Fly knows that her egg tube is the right size to go through the mesh of the wire net? How does she know that the eggs will fall on the meat?
Flies do another queer thing. If many flies are in a room, and you begin to chase them to kill them, they hide. They creep into holes and cracks.
They hide in curtains. They go behind pictures. After the hunt is over, out they come, one by one!
Flies also know how to sham death, “play dead,” you would say. If you hit one and make it fall, it will lie very still, and seem to be dead. Then, after a little, it softly spreads out its legs and its wings. Then it shakes itself. A moment more, off it goes.
This fashion of making believe to be dead does not belong to flies only. Nearly all insects, and many other animals, sham death. It is worth while to watch and see how well they do it.