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Now, here is a bug we all loathe. It is round and flat, and reddish
brown in color, and it has a disgusting odor.
But though we hate this bug, it is very fond of us. It has a short,
sharp tube folded down under its head, and this tube it likes to raise
up and stick into the skin of people, and suck out their blood.
It has no wings, only a pair of little scales where its wings should be.
Yes, May, these scales are rudimentary wings, and they are good for
nothing. It once had wings, but it preferred to go slipping about in
cracks and hiding in beds, until in course of time no wings grew, which
served it right.
It has antennæ and eyes and spiracles; indeed, it has everything a bug
should have but wings and good manners.
We call it the bed bug because its favorite home is in beds, so that it
can sally forth at night and feast upon its sleeping victims.
It lays its eggs in cracks and crevices, and each egg is like a little
jar with a rim and a lid at the top. When the young one hatches it
pushes off the lid. The young are in shape like their parents, only they
are very light colored, and almost transparent. They look like ghosts of
bugs, but they are very voracious ghosts indeed, and they eat and moult
and grow and become darker colored until they reach maturity.
One strange thing about them is that they can live a very long time with
nothing to eat, so that houses long vacated may still contain these
nuisances, that sally forth, eager to round out their emaciated forms at
the expense of the new occupants of the house.
The barn swallow is sadly afflicted by a species of these unwelcome
visitors to its nest, and the poor bats are also victimized by a species
of bed bug.
The bad odor comes from a liquid poured out of the back of young bugs,
and from the under side of old ones.
These insects are very undesirable acquaintances, and they breed so fast
that even one, brought into a house, may cause it to become generally
infested in a few weeks.
Eternal vigilance and great cleanliness are the housekeeper's only
safeguards.
There are some species of bugs that closely resemble the bed bugs, only
they have wings, and live on flowers or in the cracks of the bark of
trees.