At night out troop crowds and crowds of the little tan-colored water bugs. They run about the floor, and over the pantry shelves. They get into everything they can find, and have a beautiful time.
They are funny little fellows, and if they were not so troublesome, we might admire them.
How they can run!
All the cockroaches run very fast, so that it is hard to catch one. And they are hard and smooth, too, which makes it yet more difficult to catch them. They are well made to escape their enemies, and they are so flat they can hide in cracks or almost anywhere.
No, May, they do not fly very much. You see this one has short wings. It is a male cockroach. The female of this species of cockroach has no wings at all, only little hints of wings, as it were.
Such little useless wings we call "rudimentary" wings.
John says he thinks that is a long word for short wings.
Yes, but it is not a hard word,—ru-di-ment-ary, see if you can remember it.
The croton bugs have longer wings and they sometimes fly.
If you were to spread out the wings of a cockroach, you would find it had four.