“Say,” spoke up a slim, narrow-winged creature with abnormally long legs, “I’m one of your relations, though I can’t walk upside down.”
“You?” repeated Mrs. House Fly, contemptuously. “Why, you can’t walk decently right side up.”
“It is true,” sighed the crane fly. “I haven’t even the grace of Daddy Long Legs, for:
“My six long legs all here and there
Oppress my bosom with despair.”
“Well, I don’t care about your legs,” said Mrs. House Fly. “I was speaking of my relations—my smart relations. All are not smart. I have some who need only bite the twig of a tree and lay their eggs there, and what do you suppose happens? A round ball grows over the spot and men call it a gall, but it is really a tiny house for my cousin’s babies. I have another cousin, whose name is Cecidomyia strobiloides. It is long for such a tiny creature, but she bears up very well under it.”
“I couldn’t ever pronounce it,” said Ruth. “What does she do, please?”
“She flies to a willow tree in the Spring, before the leaves are out, and with a spear on the end of her body she cuts a gash in the tip end of the bud, just where it is most tender and juicy. She lays an egg in the gash; then goes to another twig, and does the same thing, until she has laid as many eggs as she wishes. When her babies hatch, they do not look at all like their gauzy-winged little gray mother, nor do they care for sun or air. In fact, they never stir from their cells. They can eat, though, and the sap of the tree is their food.”
“You all seem to think a good deal of eating,” said Ruth.
“Of course. Isn’t that what we are hatched for? But my cousin’s babies have lost their appetites by the Fall, and then they go to sleep. They wake up in the Spring, and, strange to say, they have grown exactly like their mother and are ready to lay eggs on some more willow twigs. Very likely the willow tree does not care to have them do it, for the twig where their cradle is does not grow into a branch as the tree meant it should. Instead, the small leaves just crowd upon each other, until they look like a green pine cone.”