Then there are the water striders.
They are bugs, and it is easy to guess how they got their name.
You surely remember the longlegged, dark colored fellows that straddle
about on top of the water, in ponds or in still pools in streams?
Who has not tried to catch them!
And how very seldom any one succeeds!
May knows where we can see some water striders close at hand.
They are on the pond in the meadow. Let us go.
Ah, you little ones! There you are, scampering over the water on your
airy, fairy feet, as though you were on dry land.
[Illustration]
How they flash about! And what cunning dimples their little feet make on
the water when they stand still!
If we keep very quiet, they will stop darting about in that wild way,
and we can see them better.
Now, water striders, why do you behave so, and what do you eat?
Eat? Why, insects, of course. And as to behavior, they may well wonder
more at ours than we at theirs.
They skate about on the surface of the water all summer, and when winter
comes they hide away at the bottom of the pond, right under the water,
or along the edges of the banks.
When the warm spring sunshine wakes up the sleeping plants, then the
little water striders wake up too.
Out they come, to resume their endless skating and insect catching, but
now they lay their eggs, gluing them fast to water weeds.
The young water striders look like their parents, and they, too, like to
go circling and flashing over the top of the water, with their long legs
spread out.