Any fresh meat tasting of Locust or Grasshopper suits my ogres. The most frequent victim is the Blue-winged Locust. There is a deplorably large consumption of this species in the cage. This is how things happen: as soon as the game is introduced, an uproar ensues in the mess-room, especially if the Dectici have been fasting for some time. They stamp about and, hampered by their long shanks, dart forward clumsily; the Locusts make desperate bounds, rush to the top of the cage and there hang on, out of the reach of the Grasshopper, who is too stout to climb so high. Some are seized at once, as soon as they enter. The others, who have taken refuge up in the dome, are only postponing for a little while the fate that awaits them. Their turn will come; and that soon. Either because they are tired or because they are tempted by the green stuff below, they will come down; and the Dectici will be after them immediately. Speared by the hunter’s fore-legs, the game is first wounded in the neck. It is always there, behind the head, that the Locust’s shell cracks first of all; it is always there that the Decticus probes persistently before releasing his hold and taking his subsequent meals off whatever joint he chooses. It is a very judicious bite. The Locust is hard to kill. Even when beheaded, he goes on hopping. I have seen some who, though half-eaten, kick out desperately and succeed, with a supreme effort, in releasing themselves and jumping away. In the brushwood, that would be so much game lost. The Decticus seems to know all about it. To overcome his prey, so prompt to escape by means of its two powerful levers, and to render it helpless as quickly as possible, he first munches and extirpates the cervical ganglia, the main seat of innervation. Is this an accident, in which the assassin’s choice plays no part? No, for I see the murder performed invariably in the same way when the prey is in possession of its full strength; and again no, because, when the Locust is offered in the form of a fresh corpse, or when he is weak, dying, incapable of defence, the attack is made anywhere, at the first spot that presents itself to the assailant’s jaws. In such cases the Decticus begins either with a haunch, the favourite morsel, or with the belly, back or chest. The preliminary bite in the neck is reserved for difficult occasions. This Grasshopper, therefore, despite his dull intellect, possesses the art of killing scientifically of which we have seen so many instances elsewhere; [43] but with him it is a rude art, falling within the knacker’s rather than the anatomist’s domain.