[Illustration]
A good many kinds of bugs live in the water, but perhaps the oddest of
all is the giant water bug.
It _is_ a giant!
Have you ever seen very large, flat brown bugs lying on the ground under
the electric street lamps?
Those are the giant water bugs.
They fly in the night from pond to pond, and are attracted by bright
lights.
They fly into the electric lights, and are killed in great numbers
sometimes.
This is such a common habit with them that in some places they are
called electric light bugs.
A good many people never saw these bugs until they were found dead
under the electric lights, and so they imagined they did not exist until
electric lights were invented.
But that is a very foolish notion; the bugs were here thousands of years
before electric lights were dreamed of.
The giant water bugs are not pleasant to handle when alive.
If you ever succeed in catching one in the water, which is not easy,
they slip about so quickly, be sure and not take it in your fingers.
The California children call a species they have there "toe-biters," and
they say they bite their toes when they go in wading.
The giant water bugs are the largest of living bugs, and they even kill
and eat fish.
Their fore legs can shut up like a jackknife. The tibia shuts into a
groove in the femur, and thus the bug is able to seize and hold its
prey.
It clasps its victim in its arms, as it were, and calmly proceeds to
suck out its blood.
In some species of the giant water bugs the female does not leave her
eggs in the pond to take care of themselves; she puts them on the back
of her mate, who is obliged to carry all of his progeny about with him
until they relieve him by hatching out and swimming off to see life for
themselves.