Animals -- Juvenile fiction; Children's stories; Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction; Natural history -- Juvenile fiction
Now the other forest people would have liked to watch the Bat longer,
but after the Ground Hog had gone off in this way, they thought it would
show too much curiosity if they stayed. So one after another went away,
and the little Bat was left alone. He fluttered around until he reached
the branch where the Blue Jay had been, and there he hung himself up to
wait until night.
"Oh dear!" he said, "I wonder how long a day is. I am hot and blind and
sleepy, and if any more of the forest people come and talk about me, I
don't know what I shall do. They don't think me good-looking because my
wings grow to my legs. I only wish I could see what they look like. I
believe they are _just_ as homely."
And then, because he was a very tired little Bat, and cross, as people
always are when they have done wrong, he began to blame somebody else
for all his trouble.
"If my father and mother had cared very much about me," he said, "they
would never have let me stay up all day. Guess if I were a big Bat and
had little Bats of my own, I'd take better care of them!" But that is
always the way, and when, long afterward, he was a big Bat with little
Bats of his own, he was a much wiser person.
[Illustration]
A SWARM LEAVES THE BEE TREE
The old Bee tree was becoming very crowded and the Queen-Mother grew
restless. There were many things to make her so. In the tree were
thousands of cells made ready for her eggs, and she had been busy for
days putting one in each. In the larger cells she laid eggs that would
hatch out Drones, and in the smaller ones she laid Worker eggs. She
never laid any Queen eggs. Perhaps she did not want any Queens among her
children, for there can never be two Queens in one swarm, and when a new
one is hatched, the Queen-Mother has to go away and find another home.
That is a law among the Bees.
The Workers, however, knew that there must be young Queens growing up
all the time. Supposing something should happen to the Queen-Mother,
what would become of the swarm if there were nobody to lay eggs? So
after she had laid several thousand Worker eggs, and it was time for the
young ones to hatch, they decided to change some of the babies into
young Queens. And this was easy enough. When they were out for honey,
they filled the pockets on their hind legs with pollen, the yellow dust
that is found in flowers. This was to be mixed with honey and water and
made into bread for the babies, who were now awake, and looked like
tiny white worms in the bottom of their cells. Then they made some that
was almost like sour jelly, and put it in a few of the Worker cells for
the tiny white worms, or Larvæ, to eat. The Larvæ that eat this jelly
grow up to be Queens, and can lay eggs. Those that eat the common bread
are either Drones or Workers, whichever their mother had planned them to
be.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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