It was a bright moonlight night when the oldest Wigglers in the
rain-barrel made up their mind to leave the water. They had always been
restless and discontented children, but it was not altogether their
fault. How could one expect any insect with such a name to float
quietly? When the Mosquito Mothers laid their long and slender eggs in
the rain-barrel, they had fastened them together in boat-shaped masses,
and there they had floated until the Wigglers were strong enough to
break through the lower ends of the eggs into the water. It had been
only a few days before they were ready to do this.
Then there had been a few more days and nights when the tiny Wigglers
hung head downward in the water, and all one could see by looking across
the barrel was the tips of their breathing tubes. Sometimes, if they
were frightened, a young Wiggler would forget and get head uppermost for
a minute, but he was always ashamed to have this happen, and made all
sorts of excuses for himself when it did. Well-bred little Wigglers
tried to always have their heads down, and Mosquitoes who stopped to
visit with them and give good advice told them such things as these:
"The Wiggler who keeps his head up may never have wings," and, "Up with
your tails and down with your eyes, if you would be mannerly, healthy,
and wise."
When they were very young they kept their heads way down and breathed
through a tube that ran out near the tail-end of their bodies. This tube
had a cluster of tiny wing-like things on the very tip, which kept it
floating on the top of the water. They had no work to do, so they just
ate food which they found in the water, and wiggled, and played tag, and
whenever they were at all frightened they dived to the bottom and stayed
there until they were out of breath. That was never very long.
There were many things to frighten them. Sometimes a stray Horse stopped
by the barrel to drink, sometimes a Robin perched on the edge for a few
mouthfuls of water, and once in a while a Dragon-Fly came over to visit
from the neighboring pond. It was not always the biggest visitor who
scared them the worst. The Horses tried not to touch the Wigglers, while
a Robin was only too glad if he happened to get one into his bill with
the water. The Dragon-Flies were the worst, for they were the hungriest,
and they were so much smaller that sometimes the Wigglers didn't see
them coming. Sometimes, too, when they thought that a Dragon-Fly was
going the other way, some of them stayed near the top of the water, only
to find when it was too late that a Dragon-Fly can go backward or
sidewise without turning around.
When they were a few days old the Wigglers began to change their skins.
This they did by wiggling out of their old ones and wearing the new ones
which had been growing underneath. This made them feel exceedingly
important, and some of them became disgracefully vain. One Wiggler would
not dive until he was sure a certain Robin had seen his new suit. It was
because of that vanity he never lived to be a Mosquito.
After they had changed their skins a few times, they had two
breathing-tubes apiece instead of one, and these two grew out near their
heads. And their heads were much larger. At the tail-end of his body
each Wiggler now had two leaf-like things with which he swam through
the water. Because they used different breathing-tubes, those Wigglers
who had moulted or cast their skins several times now floated in the
water with their heads just below the surface and their tails down. When
a Wiggler is old enough for this, he is called a Pupa, or half-grown
one.
There are often young Mosquito children of all ages in the same
barrel--eggs, Wigglers, and Pupae all together. There is plenty of room
and plenty of food, but because they have no work to do there is much
time for quarrelling and talking about each other.
This year the Oldest Brother had put on so many airs that nobody liked
it at all, and several of the Wigglers had been heard to say that they
couldn't bear the sight of him. He had such a way of saying, "When I was
a young Wiggler and had to keep my head down," or repeating, "Up with
your tails and down with your eyes, if you would be mannerly, healthy,
and wise." One little Wiggler crossed his feelers at him, and they say
that it is just as bad to do that as to make faces. Besides, it is so
much easier--if you have the feelers to cross.
Now the Oldest Brother and those of his brothers and sisters who had
hatched from the same egg-mass were talking of leaving the rain-barrel
forever. It was a bright moonlight night and they longed to get their
wings uncovered and dried, for then they would be full-grown Mosquitoes,
resting most of the day and having glorious times at night.
The Oldest Brother was jerking himself through the water as fast as he
could, giving his jointed body sudden bends, first this way and then
that, and when he met anyone nearly his own age he said, "Come with me
and cast your skin. It is a fine evening for moulting."
Sometimes they answered, "All right," and jerked or wiggled or swam
along with him, and sometimes a Pupa would answer, "I'm afraid I'm not
old enough to slip out of my skin easily."
Then the Oldest Brother would reply, "Don't stop for that. You'll be
older by the time we begin." That was true, of course, and all members
of Mosquito families grow old very fast. So it happened that when the
moon peeped over the farmhouse, showing her bright face between the two
chimneys, twenty-three Pupae were floating close to each other and making
ready to change their skins for the last time.
It was very exciting. All the young Wigglers hung around to see what was
going on, and pushed each other aside to get the best places. The Oldest
Brother was much afraid that somebody else would begin to moult before
he was ready, and all the brothers were telling their sisters to be
careful to split their skins in the right place down the back, and the
sisters were telling them that they knew just as much about moulting as
their brothers did. Every little while the Oldest Brother would say,
"Now wait! Don't one of you fellows split his old skin until I say so."
Then two or three of his brothers would become impatient, because their
outer skins were growing tighter every minute, and would say, "Why not?"
and would grumble because they had to wait. The truth was that the
Oldest Brother could not get his skin to crack, although he jerked and
wiggled and took very deep breaths. And he didn't want any one else to
get ahead of him. At last it did begin to open, and he had just told the
others to commence moulting, when a Mosquito Mother stopped to lay a few
eggs in the barrel.
"Dear me!" said she. "You are not going to moult to-night, are you?"
"Yes, we are," answered the Oldest Brother, giving a wiggle that split
his skin a little farther. "We'll be biting people before morning."
"You?" said the Mosquito Mother, with a queer little smile. "I wouldn't
count on doing that. But you young people may get into trouble if you
moult now, for it looks like rain."
She waved her feelers upward as she spoke, and they noticed that heavy
black clouds were piling up in the sky. Even as they looked the moon was
hidden and the wind began to stir the branches of the trees. "It will
rain," she said, "and then the water will run off the roof into this
barrel, and if you have just moulted and cannot fly, you will be
drowned."
"Pooh!" answered the Oldest Brother. "Guess we can take care of
ourselves. I'm not afraid of a little water." Then he tried to crawl out
of his old skin.
The Mosquito Mother stayed until she had laid all the eggs she wanted
to, and then flew away. Not one of the Pupae had been willing to listen
to her, although some of the sisters might have done so if their
brothers had not made fun of them.
At last, twenty-three soft and tired young Mosquitoes stood on their
cast-off pupa-skins, waiting for their wings to harden. It is never easy
work to crawl out of one's skin, and the last moulting is the hardest of
all. It was then, when they could do nothing but wait, that these young
Mosquitoes began to feel afraid. The night was now dark and windy, and
sometimes a sudden gust blew their floating pupa skins toward one side
of the barrel. They had to cling tightly to them, for they suddenly
remembered that if they fell into the water they might drown. The oldest
one found himself wishing to be a Wiggler again. "Wigglers are never
drowned," thought he.
"Who are you going to bite first?" asked one of his brothers.
He answered very crossly: "I don't know and I don't care. I'm not
hungry. Can't you think of anything but eating?"
"Why, what else is there to think about?" cried all the floating
Mosquitoes.
"Well, there is flying," said he.
"Humph! I don't see what use flying would be except to carry us to our
food," said one Mosquito Sister. She afterward found out that it was
good for other reasons.
After that they didn't try to talk with their Oldest Brother. They
talked with each other and tried their legs, and wished it were light
enough for them to see their wings. Mosquitoes have such interesting
wings, you know, thin and gauzy, and with delicate fringes around the
edges and along the line of each vein. The sisters, too, were proud of
the pockets under their wings, and were in a hurry to have their wings
harden, so that they could flutter them and hear the beautiful singing
sound made by the air striking these pockets. They knew that their
brothers could never sing, and they were glad to think that they were
ahead of them for once. It was not really their fault that they felt so,
for the brothers had often put on airs and laughed at them.
Then came a wonderful flash of lightning and a long roll of thunder, and
the trees tossed their beautiful branches to and fro, while big
rain-drops pattered down on to the roof overhead and spattered and
bounded and rolled toward the edge under which the rain-barrel stood.
"Fly!" cried the Oldest Brother, raising his wings as well as he could.
"We can't. Where to?" cried the rest.
"Fly any way, anywhere!" screamed the Oldest Brother, and in some
wonderful way the whole twenty-three managed to flutter and crawl and
sprawl up the side of the building, where the rain-drops fell past but
did not touch them. There they found older Mosquitoes waiting for the
shower to stop. Even the Oldest Brother was so scared that he shook, and
when he saw that same Mosquito Mother who had told him to put off
changing his skin, he got behind two other young Mosquitoes and kept
very still. Perhaps she saw him, for it was lighter then than it had
been. She did not seem to see him, but he heard her talking to her
friends. "I told him," she said, "that he might better put off moulting,
but he answered that he could take care of himself, and that he would be
out biting people before morning."
"Did he say that?" cried the other old Mosquitoes.
"He did," she replied.
Then they all laughed and laughed and laughed again, and the young
Mosquito found out why. It was because Mosquito brothers have to eat
honey, and only the sisters may bite people and suck their blood. He had
thought so often how he would sing around somebody until he found the
nicest, juiciest spot, and then settle lightly down and bite and suck
until his slender little body was fat and round and red with its
stomachful of blood. And that could never be! He could never sing, and
he would have to sit around with his stomach full of honey and see his
eleven sisters gorged with blood and hear them singing sweetly as they
flew. If Mosquito Fathers had ever come to the barrel he might have
found this out, but they never did. He sneaked off by himself until he
met an early bird and then--well, you know birds must eat something, and
the Mosquito was right there. Of course, after that, his brothers and
sisters had a chance to do as they wanted to, and the eleven sisters
bit thirteen people the very next night and had the loveliest kind of
Mosquito time.
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[Illustration]