Wonderful little lives

Contents

I. The Lucky Little Grasshopper II. The Adventures of an Earthworm III. Mischievous Madam Mosquito .

IV. The Most Beautiful One in the Garden 69

V, The Untidy Fly . . . .

II The Adventures Of An Earthworm

II

THE ADVENTURES OF AN EARTHWORM

I. HOW HE WALKED WITHOUT LEGS

ONE evening when Grasshopper Green was fast asleep, with his feet glued safely to the under side of , a grapevine leaf, a new little creature came squirming up out of the ground below. It was a baby earthworm. He had hatched from a tiny egg buried in the soil. The first thing he did was to twist and wriggle this way and that as he pushed his pointed head up through the soft earth to the air above.

After he reached the top, he raised his head and swayed it to and fro to find out what the world was like. And now what do you think? He could not see a single thing, or hear a single sound. He had no eyes or ears or nose. He had no arms or legs. He was only a soft round worm with a bit of a mouth on the under side of his pointed head.

In the darkness he kept swaying to and fro. He could feel the damp air against his skin. Some of the air soaked into his body through tiny holes in his skin, ever so much tinier than the prick of a pin. The fresh air kept his blood red and pure. It made him feel happy and lively. He moved his head faster and pulled his tail out of the ground. He was ready to hunt for something to eat.

So he set out on his travels. Travelling was slow work for him, because he had no real legs to use in walking. The best he could do was to wriggle over the ground with the help of some stiff little bristles that grew on his body. His body was made up of many joints or rings set close together. On each ring grew eight of these bristles.

When he wanted to travel, he stretched out his head as far as he could, and hooked the bristles nearest his head into the ground. Then he unhooked the bristles that had been holding him steady at his other end, and drew his body up thick and short. When he was as short as he could be, he dug his tail bristles into the ground to hold him steady again, while he stretched his body out long and thin. When he was as long as he could stretch, he dug in his front bristles again, and drew himself up short just as before. It was too hard work to be very much fun, you see.

Luckily for this wee worm, his mother had laid her eggs in the middle of a bed of onions beside the grape arbor. He had hardly wriggled two inches before he almost touched the stem of a young onion plant. He stopped and began to move his head to and fro, as if he were sniffing the onion. Perhaps he smelled it through his skin. When at last he really rubbed against the plant, he seized a bit between his upper and lower lip, and sucked it into his mouth. Ah, but it tasted delicious! So he swallowed it down as quickly as he could, and pinched off another bit of onion with his soft lips.

He swallowed each mouthful by squeezing it down his throat. He had no teeth for chewing, but after the food had been swallowed, it was ground fine between specks of stones inside him. Very likely he had swallowed these specks of stones while he was pushing his way up from his empty egg shell to the air above. Now they were exactly what he needed for grinding up his food.

Of course he could eat much faster than if he had been obliged to stop and chew every bite. He ate and ate and ate, and his little body stretched out like India rubber to hold the food. When he was so round and tight and full that he felt almost as if he were going to burst, he stopped eating and rested for a while.

The baby earthworm lay quiet and happy under the onion plant. He was happy because he had eaten all he wanted, and because the dewy night air felt pleasant on his skin.

Far above him the stars twinkled in the sky; but he could not see them. A breeze whispered among the leaves of the trees in the garden; a bird overhead chirped sleepily; the grasses rustled here and there under the foot of some small hurrying creature. But the baby earthworm could not hear these sounds. He felt the earth under him, and the air around him, and the food inside him. And just then he did not care about anything else in the whole, wide, wonderful, beautiful world.

While he rested, the food inside his body was ground up fine and began to be changed into blood. The new blood made him grow a little larger. Even as a baby, you know, he looked like the grown-up earthworms, except that his body had not so many rings. As he grew, he would have more rings; for the last ring at the end of his tail would divide into two rings. Prettysoon the last ring of the two new ones would divide into two, and then the last one of those two, and so on till he was all grown up.

On this very first night of his life, however, he did not grow fast enough to get a new ring right away. There would be plenty of time for that later. Now, as soon as he felt like working after his first meal of vegetables, he began to hunt around for a place to live.

II. HOW HE DUG HIS HOUSE

In some wonderful way he knew just what to do, though he had never been taught. He had never watched any other worm dig a hole in which to live. And yet he set straight to work without pausing to think or plan. Indeed he could not think even if he tried to do so, because he did not have that kind of a brain. He simply went on without thinking and did the things that all earthworms do naturally because their parents have always done the same things.

First he stretched out his head and felt of the ground, now here, now there. He was hunting for a firm smooth spot where he might begin to dig. When he found it, he put his mouth down close to the earth, opened his lips, pinched off a mouthful, and swallowed it. Wasn't that an astonishing way to dig! Then he took another bite, and another, and another, till he was full of dirt. He had eaten a hole in the ground. When he was so full that he could not swallow any more, he pressed his body small so that the dirt was squeezed out. He let this curlycue of earth fall outside, at the top of his hole. It was the shape of a tiny worm, and is called a worm-cast.

He dug all the rest of the night as hard as he could, because he was in a hurry to have a home of his own. Once in a while he found a speck of good food in the mouthfuls of earth. This food stayed in his body and helped to make new blood and give him strength to go on working. At intervals, very likely, he crawled to the onion plant and took a bite of it to cheer him on in his labor. He just loved onion!

At last, when his hole was almost deep enough to hide in, the sun rose. The wee worm had that minute carried a load of earth to the top and was emptying it outside. A level golden ray of sunlight shot across the sparkling dewdrops and glistened on the busy little brown body of the baby earthworm. Doubtless he had no idea what was causing him to feel so queer and feverish, for he had never before been in the sunshine, you know. He shrugged his ringed body and squirmed and twisted his tail, and lifted his head and swayed it to and fro. Then he wriggled back into the hole, and cuddled down as close as he could in the cool moist earth.

But that did not do him much good, for the sun rose higher and shone into the top of his little cave. In the queerest way he knew, without being told, exactly what he ought to do next. He reached out of the hole with his pointed head and took hold of a piece of dead grass with his lips. Then he pulled and pulled till he had dragged the grass to the opening of his hole, or burrow, as it is called. He pulled the pointed tip in as far as it would go. It covered the top so that the sunlight could not shine in. Finally, in his cool shady home the wise little worm curled down cosily and rested all day long.

Outside in the garden, the sun shone and the birds sang; the butterflies fluttered their lovely wings and the bees buzzed over the flowers. The grasshoppers swung on the grasses, and the spiders spun webs or went hunting. Under the ground the little earthworm, hidden in his new burrow, which he had dug all himself, lay quiet and waited for the dewy dark night.

When daylight faded and the air grew damp and cool, the young worm woke up and came squirming outdoors. The first thing he did was to hook the bristles at the end of his tail into the wall of his burrow. Then he stretched out his head, now this way, now that way, till he touched a leaf of onion. After eating all he wanted, he wriggled back into his hole and began to dig it bigger. He rubbed the inside of his house smooth with his slimy body. Something like glue oozed from his skin and covered the walls with a firm lining. When he had finished it, he had the cosiest kind of a little home, just large enough for one.

III. HOW HE ESCAPED WITH HIS LIFE

Nothing very exciting happened for a while. All day long he hid in his burrow, and all night long he worked and ate. Sometimes he dragged pieces of leaves inside his hole and ate them there. As he grew bigger and longer, he had to make his hole bigger and longer, too. And the longer he grew, the farther he could stretch to reach his supper. But by and by came a time when he had eaten every bit of green leaf within reach.

That night he stretched out his head as far as he possibly could stretch in a circle all around his hole. He could not find a single bite of anything good to eat. So what do you think that reckless little worm did then? He unhooked his tail from the top of the burrow, and wriggled away over the ground till he touched another onion plant. Then he ate and ate and ate till he nearly burst, for he was dreadfully hungry. After resting a time, he wanted to return to his home. He squirmed off in a hurry, but he never, never found his way back again. He had lost the first little burrow that he ever dug in his life.

So the next thing he had to do was to go to work and dig a new one. This new hole was like the other, except that it was larger and deeper. He dug it deeper, because the ground was getting dryer than it had been earlier in the summer. There were not so many showers to keep the soil at the surface soft and moist. It made him feel sick to swallow dry soil. So he burrowed down deep where the earth was damp and pleasant to his skin.

One morning he had a terrible adventure. It was just at sunrise, and he had crawled into his burrow and lay resting near the top. The night had been rather chilly, and he felt a little numb. Though he certainly hated to be too hot, he also hated to be too cold. He was waiting perhaps for a bit of warmth from the sun to steal over him before he wriggled down to the deep end of the hole. Or it may be that he liked to stay near the dewy leaf that covered his door. Whatever was his reason, he was lying there quiet and comfortable, when suddenly something happened.

A quick patter of little claws, a swift twitch of the dewy leaf, and a robin's beak darted into the hole like lightning and snapped at the worm's soft head! That was a narrow escape. He had wriggled out of reach just in time. He squirmed on down to the bottom of his burrow as fast as he could go, and stayed there curled up safe and still till after the birds had all gone to sleep at night. Then he could come out and hunt for his own supper without getting into danger of being gobbled down by a hungry robin.

Anybody would think that such an experience would teach a worm to stay hidden at home in the daytime. But one queer thing about worms, and many other creatures, too, is that they never learn anything new no matter how long they live. When they are born they know as much as their parents do, and they can never be taught anything more.

You could never imagine how foolishly that little worm acted one day. It had been raining all night in the garden. As soon as he knew that a shower was falling outside, that silly worm came wriggling out as fast as he could wriggle, and squirmed away over the wet ground. He did not even try to stay near enough so that he might possibly find his home again if he hunted carefully all around. He just went crawling on and on and on, without thinking what might happen when morning should dawn. He enjoyed being out in the rain.

He crawled across the onion-bed to a row of cabbages. There he stopped to take a few nibbles. Then he hurried on over the gravel path. On his way, he passed a drowned fly, and ate several mouthfuls of it, for he was fond of fresh meat. Once or twice he felt a soft round body exactly like his own wriggling against him, or under or over him. The rain had brought other earthworms out of their holes that night, and started them on their reckless wanderings.

Finally the rain ceased, the clouds drifted apart, and the sun rose. Our little worm lay stretched out pale and thin on the path. He was no longer dark-colored, because he had swallowed no earth for hours. His skin was so clear that his two veins full of blood showed red inside his body. He was so tired that he could hardly move.

But as the sunshine fell on him, he squirmed slowly on across the gravel, and dragged himself inch by inch on and on and on. He did not know what was ahead of him, or where he was going. All that he wanted was to wriggle somewhere out of the burning light and heat of the sun.

It was lucky for him that he happened to crawl toward a spot of soft loose soil where a root of celery had been pulled up the day before. He pushed his head beneath a wet lump of earth and drew the rest of his body on into the damp delightful dark little cave. There he rested all day, while out in the sunshine many other foolish worms dragged themselves blindly on in the glaring heat. Some were gobbled down by hungry birds, and others curled their aching little bodies round and round in tight coils, and lay still till they dried up and died. An earthworm cannot live a day in dry air.

After this our young worm dug another burrow for a new home. You see he really had to have a hiding-place to save him from his enemies. He had no shell to protect his soft body from being trampled on by animals or snapped up by a hungry bird. He had no teeth or sting with which to fight. He had no legs that he could use in running away from danger. The only thing he could do for safety was to hide in a hole.

IV. HOW HE HELPED THE GARDEN TO GROW

And what do you suppose! This is most wonderful of all. Earthworms help to make all the gardens in the world, because they dig so many holes. They help by swallowing their bodies full of soil and carrying it up to the top of the ground when they dig their burrows. This makes the soil fine and rich so that plants can grow in it. The leaves which they drag into their burrows and tear into shreds make the soil rich too. There are so many millions of worms working in the ground that all together they dig up tons of earth and turn it over and mix it fine and make it rich.

Besides this, the air from above moves through their winding burrows and keeps the soil loose and sweet. When rain falls, part of the water trickles down deeper because of the holes. Some plants grow faster when their roots find the smooth little tunnels in which they may spread and branch. The deaf and dumb and blind little earthworm is the most useful of all the small creatures that live in the garden.

When our young worm had finished his new home, very likely he felt that he was safe there at last. He was careful not to lie too near the top in the morning, when robins were out hunting for their breakfasts. He was particular to hook his tail fast to the wall of his burrow whenever he went out in the evening. But one night a still more frightful adventure happened to him. He was chased by a mole.

It happened in this way. He had been working busily for hours in digging out a tiny room at the very bottom of his burrow. He wanted to get it ready for the winter, as the summer was almost gone, and the nights were becoming long and chilly. He was pinching off one mouthful of earth after another, and swallowing them as fast as he could squeeze them down.

Doubtless he must have made some sort of noise under the ground there. Perhaps his squirmings and wrigglings and munehings sounded for inches through the earth around him. Well, anyhow, a hungry gray mole, who was making a tunnel through the celery-bed, heard the earthworm at work. She turned around in her tunnel and began to dig like mad in the direction of the sound. She was very fond of earthworms for dinner. She clawed away the dirt with her tiny shovel-like front paws, and kicked it out behind her furry little body as fast as she could dig.

Now, as she was almost as big as a rat, she could not help making a stir with her shovelling and kicking. The pounding and thumping shook the ground around the busy earthworm. The instant he felt it, he stopped eating and wriggled up out of. that hole faster than he had ever wriggled before. Though he had never heard of a mole, something told him to get away from that spot as soon as he possibly could.

He squirmed up to the top of his burrow, and waited a moment. The thumping and pounding seemed nearer than before, so he wriggled away at his very best gait, stretching out his head and drawing up his tail, stretching out his head and drawing up his tail, stretching out his head and drawing up his tail, till he bumped into a celery stalk and curled down to rest. He kept still and did not move even the ring at the tip of his tail. This was lucky for him, because the hungry mole had plowed her way clear up to the top of the worm's empty burrow and was poking out her head to sniff around in the dark at that very minute.

As soon as the earthworm felt able to work, he was obliged to dig another hole. This one he wanted to make deeper than any of the others, because winter was coming. In winter the ground freezes hard on top, just as water freezes into ice on the surface of a pond. Digging on a cool night in autumn was slow work, because the cold made the worm feel numb and lazy. Sometimes his soft body felt too stiff to stretch another inch. But he kept on burrowing deeper and deeper till he had finished a safe and cosy little room far down in the ground where the soil around would not freeze, even in the coldest weather.

When he was ready to begin his long winter sleep, he dragged some dead leaves into his new burrow and plugged up the opening so that the frosty air could not creep inside. Then he crawled down to the very bottom and curled up in a soft little brown bunch to sleep till the spring sunshine melted the frozen earth above him, and the warm sweet showers came trickling through the soil which he had helped to make.

Ill

MISCHIEVOUS MADAM MOS- QUITO

Ill

MISCHIEVOUS MADAM MOS- QUITO

I. WHERE THE LITTLE WIGGLERS LIVED

ONE spring morning, long before the sun rose, a little mother mosquito went flitting over the garden. She was looking for water in which to lay her eggs so that there would be some baby mosquitoes by and by. She hunted along the path, and around the bushes, and in the corners of the hedge; but she could not find even a broken bottle or empty tin can that might have held some drops from the last shower.

Then she flew to the house at one end of the garden and crawled over the rainwater barrel in search of a crack in the cover. When she was sure that she could not possibly squeeze inside to lay her eggs, she went to the hydrant on the lawn to see if the hose had been leaking in a puddle underneath. But she could not find a single muddy spot. So she spread her filmy wings again and flitted away over the hedge and across the street and around a barn to a pond in a vacant lot beyond.

The pond had begun to dry up at one end. The ground near it was wet and spongy, with long yellow grasses bending over little pools here and there. These pools were exactly what the mother mosquito wanted, because there were no fish in them to eat her babies. Perhaps she knew that the fish in the pond could not flap across the grassy spots to reach the puddles scattered over the marshy place.

Anyway, she flew to one of the patches of quiet water and dropped her eggs upon it. She laid as many as three hundred or more. They were all stuck together in a tiny raft which floated out on the surface of the pool. The sun came up and shone on the ripples. A bird swung on a reed and fluttered down to drink. She dipped in her bill, splash! so near the wee brown raft that it was almost sucked inside. Away it went, dipping and tossing in the fairy wavelets, when suddenly, kerplunk, a big green frog hopped right on top of it. But the tiny raft was light as cork, and instead of sinking beneath him as he swam down to the bottom, it bobbed up to the top of the water again, and danced wildly hither and thither in the whirling billows caused by his plunge.

All the sweet spring morning the raft floated in the sunshine, and early in the afternoon the baby mosquitoes hatched out.

Now you would have been surprised! The babies that came squirming out of those eggs did not look a bit like their mother. They were nothing but soft dark little wigglers. The first tiny creature that wiggled out of the largest egg dived from under the raft and swam up to the surface of the pool to breathe. Instead of poking her head up to the air, she hung upside down, with one point of her forked tail pushed up to the top. She breathed through a tube which was in her tail instead of in her head.

As soon as she was full of fresh air, she began to flap the other point of her tail. Away she swam, bending and twisting and squirming, this way and that, as fast as she could wiggle. While she was darting and doubling, she kept waving the hairs near her mouth to and fro. This quick steady motion drove the water toward her mouth. In the water were the very tiniest bits of food for her. When they floated into her soft open mouth, she swallowed them and waited for more to be pushed along by the busy little hairs.

After swimming and eating for about a minute, she flapped up to the top again to take another breath. Then she hurried down to eat. Going up was hard work because she was heavier than the water.

She had to jerk her tiny body very fast and wiggle her tail and flap all her little swimming-hairs at once. She had six swimming-hairs on her tail and others on the rest of her body. She rowed with hairs as you swim by kicking your legs and throwing out your arms.

As soon as she reached the top of the pool and poked her breathing-tube into the air, she Telt lighter, because the new fresh air in her helped her to float. So she could hang there upside down without any trouble. When she was ready to go swimming around below again, she wiggled away downward as easily as a real fish.

Now one day a very dreadful thing almost happened. When she came hurrying up to breathe, after being a whole minute down at the bottom, she could not poke the end of her breathing-tube through the top of the water. Though she pushed with all her might, and flapped and twisted and jerked, she could not reach the air above. It seemed as if there was a layer of thin rubber over the surface of the pool. Finally she gave a last wild squirm, and managed to slip out from beneath that dangerous spot. Her tail stretched up to the air in a twinkling. She hung there, breathing and breathing and breathing, deep down and all the way through her soft body. She had almost drowned that time.

What caused all this trouble for her had been a drop of oil that had floated from over a dead frog at the edge of the pool. The oil made a tough film on the water, just where she tried to push through at first. If she had not wiggled away from under it and found a clear space, she would surely have drowned. Sometimes, when people wish to get rid of mosquitoes, they pour kerosene oil on the ponds and puddles near their houses. Then all the wigglers drown because they cannot poke their tails up to the air to breathe.

Not long after this narrow escape, the young mosquito had an adventure that was really a joke, though very likely she did not find it funny. She was wiggling hither and thither while she swallowed her dinner. A hundred or more of her brothers and sisters were twisting and dancing and squirming around her in the pool. Suddenly, with a swish and a rush, a terrible monster of a tadpole dashed among them. His tail went flap, flap, flap, as he darted this way and that, with his round horny mouth opened hungrily.

Now how were those frightened little wigglers to know that tadpoles are vegetarians and eat bits of plants instead of gobbling up lively mosquito babies by the dozen? They were doubtless quite as much scared as if he had been a great greedy fish instead of a harmless tadpole. They skipped in every direction to escape from the tossing and twirling of the ripples which surged about his thrashing tail. A tadpole, or pollywog, as it is called, may not seem very large to you. But you just try being a tiny wiggler once, and you will see. Perhaps you would feel like making up a fairy tale about a horrid big fat ogre called Pollywog-the-Wiggler-Killer.

In spite of such perils, the mosquito baby grew fat as she ate more and more. When she was too big for her old skin, she wiggled out of it, and wore a new one a size larger. The third time she changed her skin, she looked so different that she would hardly have recognized herself with her own eyes, if she had happened to have any.

The head end of her body had swollen out big and round. She breathed through two little horns at the back of her neck, instead of through one of the points of her tail. She felt so light that she stayed at the top of the water most of the time, with her horns poking through to the air above. She did not care about eating now. She was happy enough just to float there, breathing and resting at the surface of the pool.