“I worked all night,” he told Maya, “all night. But what can you do? You’ve got to do something to get somewhere. And I’m not altogether satisfied with this pine; I should have tackled a fir-tree.” He wiped his brow and smiled in self-pity.
“How are your children?” asked Maya pleasantly.
“Thank you,” said Fridolin, “thank you for your interest. But”—he hesitated—“but I don’t supervise the way I used to. Still, I have reason to believe they are all doing well.”
As he sat there, a little brown man with slightly curtailed wing-sheaths and a breastplate that looked like a head too large for its body, Maya thought he was almost comical; but she knew he was a dangerous beetle who could do immense harm to the mighty trees of the forest, and if his tribe attacked a tree in numbers then the green needles were doomed, the tree would turn sear and die. It was utterly without defenses against the little marauders who destroyed the bark and the sap-wood. And the sap-wood is necessary to the life of a tree because it carries the sap up to the very tips of the branches. There were stories of how whole forests had fallen victims to the race of boring-beetles. Maya looked at Fridolin reflectively; she was awed into solemnity at the thought of the great power these little creatures possessed and of how important they could become.
Fridolin sighed and said in a worried tone:
“Ah, life would be beautiful if there were no woodpeckers.”
Maya nodded.
“Yes, indeed, you’re right. The woodpecker gobbles up every insect he sees.”
“If it were only that,” observed Fridolin, “if it were only that he got the careless people who fool around on the outside, on the bark, I’d say, ‘Very well, a woodpecker must live too.’ But it seems all wrong that the bird should follow us right into our corridors into the remotest corners of our homes.”
“But he can’t. He’s too big, isn’t he?”