A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"English, Douglas
General
A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"
English, Douglas
Animals -- Juvenile literature
The first thing that Spinipes does is to work this little pair of
scissors in the sand so as to make a little hole. I am showing you on
page 148 a picture of her when she is just starting to dig. Every little
pellet of sand she digs out she puts carefully round the outside of the
hole, and presently she glues them all together. She carries the glue
somewhere inside her, and brings it out when she wants it, Then she digs
a little deeper and glues another layer of sand pellets on the top of
the first one, and in a very short time she has dug a hole about two
inches deep, and built a little tube round the top of it, which is made
of the little sand-pellets she has brought out of the hole. Sometimes
the tube stands straight up, but more often it bends about half-way and
curves downwards. When she has finished it off, and is sure that the
hole is deep enough, and the tube is long enough, she goes right down to
the bottom and lays an egg, and she hangs the egg by a tiny thread
(which she also makes herself, but I don't know how she does it) to the
side of the hole a little above the bottom. You will be able to see this
in the picture, but you must remember that in this and in some of the
other pictures the sand has been cut away so that you can see exactly
how the hole goes. Then, if it is a bright, sunny day, as it usually is
when she begins digging, she flies away, and in about half an hour's
time comes back carrying something clasped tight against her body. What
do you think that is? It is a small green caterpillar. She stops a
moment at the entrance of the tube, pushes the caterpillar down in front
of her, and disappears after it. In a few seconds she is out again and
off, and in another quarter of an hour or so she is back again with
another caterpillar and so on, without ever tiring, through six or seven
hours of a hot June or July day.
[Illustration: This shows you the cocoon which Spinipes'
grub makes for itself. I have opened it to show you the
grub, and also the little partition in the shaft above the
grub, which is the last thing Spinipes herself makes]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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