At last the day had come, and the children were to leave
Camp-in-the-Clouds. They had been there for one whole glorious week of
fishing, hunting, camping, picnicing, stories, and sleeping in tents.
Betty and Jimmie felt rather sober, for the time for them to go back to
the city was drawing near. A week now, and their good times for the
summer would be over. Already the leaves were turning a little, and the
air growing crisper every day. Indeed, up in Camp-in-the-Clouds they had
twice in the early morning to break the ice on the spring in order to
get the water, and at night the blankets felt warm and cosey. Betty and
Jimmie liked their city home, and after they were once in it they
enjoyed their school work, too. They had many friends, entertainments,
parties, and made many expeditions to the Zoo and to the parks. But,
somehow, the happiest days of all the year came in the summer in
Rangeley Village. Every hour seemed precious to them now, and the
fingers on Betty's right hand--the number of days that were left--were
all too few. Even Jimmie, who cared less for the country than Betty did,
was sorry. And the children were sorry to have them go. All through the
cold, white winter in Rangeley Village they were expecting the Reece
children and the old guide. With their coming, good times began again.
And this morning, on which they were leaving camp, they felt rather
blue, for, although they expected to come back the next summer, as
indeed they did, yet it seemed such a long, long time to wait! They
followed Ben Gile single file down the mountain at a good pace, but
without saying very much. By noon they had reached the Dead River Ponds,
and were ready for luncheon.
"I think some of that birch, Tom," said Ben Gile, "would make a good
fire for us."
[Illustration:
_A._ Feeding the baby wasps.
_B._ A grown-up wasp.]
Tom, who was a famous woodchopper in winter, went off toward the tree,
followed by lazy little Peter, who loved to see others work. Soon the
chips were flying right and left. Suddenly there was a yell from Peter.
Tom dropped his axe. Ben Gile hurried over to the boy, and the others
crowded around. Tom was sure a splinter had gone into Peter's eye. The
lad was holding on to his eye, and jumping up and down with pain. But as
Ben Gile was trying to make the boy take his hand away, Tom exclaimed,
grabbed one hand with the other, and made for the pond. "It's hornets,
Ben!" he called; and before the others could say anything he had clapped
some mud on his own hand and brought mud for Peter's eye, which he
poulticed with this useful material, and tied around it a big white
handkerchief. Although Peter did not in the least like the bite, yet he
felt rather proud of the bandage, and for the first time in his life he,
too, wanted to know about the creatures who could give so much pain.
"Tell us, sir," the children cried, "about the wasps while dinner is
cooking."
So Ben Gile, who had left the cooking to the other guides, gathered the
children and Mrs. Reece about him, and began: "One day last fall I saw,
high up in a tree near the pond, the pretty, gray nest of Mrs.
Vespa-Wasp. It did not look like a real house, with windows in it and
steps leading up to it. But there it hung, swinging in the bare
branches, its walls of pretty, soft gray blending so beautifully with
the pale-blue sky.
"I wondered whether any of the wasp family was at home, but the house
was too high for me to reach, so I went away to find a long pole with
which to knock. With my long pole I knocked gently at first, then louder
and louder, but no one stirred within. So I poked harder, trying to
break off a strong branch which ran straight through the top of the
house. At last it broke off, and down came the gray house almost into my
arms.
"It was big and round, like a Japanese lantern. Guess of what it was
made? Just paper. But not our kind of paper; it was wasp-paper. Mrs.
Vespa and her family make this paper out of wood-pulp, which they get by
scraping off the weathered wood from trees and fences. Of course this
old wood is of various colors, but that makes the house so much the
prettier. One wasp comes back with its burden of woody pulp rolled up in
a little pellet. This it takes and spreads in thin ribbons along the
edge of the wall which is being made. Perhaps this edge is dark gray.
Then off it flies for more material, while another takes its place with
a pellet of light gray, which is soon skilfully moulded on to the edge.
Sometimes the outer wall consists of several layers of this wasp-paper,
which is strong and waterproof. Within the wall are many stories of
cone, built like different floors in our own houses.
"Early in the spring Mrs. Vespa-Wasp, who has been passing the cold
winter days tucked away in a warm crevice somewhere, comes out and finds
a site for her summer home. She begins this as a very small and simple
one, starting with just a few rooms fastened to the branch of a tree.
Here she lays an egg in each little room, then brings in food for the
new baby wasps which are in the making. The kind of food which is stored
away depends upon the kind of wasps. Some like beetles, some spiders,
some caterpillars, and others grasshoppers and cicadas.
"As in the bee family, the first children are all workers, because Mrs.
Vespa-Wasp needs assistance in building up the home and feeding the
children. This first home is small, not nearly large enough for the
growing family, so new rooms must be built at once. These are added on
to the first ones until there is a good-sized layer of them. If Mrs.
Wasp should go on making this upper story larger and larger, it would be
buffeted about by the wind and rain, and perhaps broken. So the family
starts a second story under the first. On the under side of the top
floor some of the cells are broken away and a stem is made to start the
next floor, and so on, until there are four or five combs in the house.
They are always building the house over, tearing down the walls to make
room for new floors; but this does not make the house unsafe in the mean
time, as the walls are not connected with the floors, but form a loose
envelope about them.
"Later in the season, after the family has become very large, some of
the upper cells are torn out, making a nice, warm attic, where the
family may go to keep out of the wind and rain. They dislike the cold
and wet very much.
"I carried this big house to my cabin with me, so that I might look it
over and see just how it was arranged. Very carefully I cut away a
little of the outer wall until I had a place large enough to look
through. Guess what I saw lying cuddled down in many of these rooms?
Little, soft, white baby wasps. When the Vespa family are grown up they
are called hornets, and Peter and Tom know how hornets sting! I was not
afraid of the babies, but was not sure that all the old wasps were out.
It was a cold day, and wasps get stiff very quickly, so I watched
carefully to see whether the warm air of the room would not limber up
some stiff joints which were perhaps in hiding up-stairs in the house.
Sure enough, in a few moments out crawled a worker, looking quite dazed
and sheepish at the change in temperature. I did not wait for it to
become thoroughly awake, but picked it up with the forceps and put it
out of the window. I was kept busy, for twenty-five old fellows walked
out, thinking, no doubt, that they had made a mistake in the season, and
that it was not time, after all, for them to die. All the wasp family,
except the queens, expect to die, and do die in the autumn.
"I could not find either flies or spiders for the babies, and even if
there had been a few about I could not have used them, as there was no
worker wasp to chew them soft and fine for them. So I made a nice,
appetizing syrup of sugar and water, and found that young wasps were as
eager for sweets as little children are. They worked their baby mouths
busily as long as I had the patience to feed them. When the Vespa family
are grown up they eat honey dew from the little aphids, fruit juice, and
the nectar from flowers, or, if fortune favors them, they may gain
entrance to Mrs. Honey-Bee's home, and feast from her well-filled
honeycombs. But the babies all eat insects which their mothers put in
the little rooms beside the eggs.
"Mrs. Polistes is a cousin of Mrs. Vespa. She is long and slender, while
Mrs. Vespa is rather broad. Her house is a much simpler affair. It has
just one layer of rooms suspended by a stem from the under side of a
porch, or maybe the eaves, of a house."
"Are there solitary wasps," asked Jimmie, "just as there are solitary
bees?"
"Many wasps prefer to live alone rather than in a big house with
hundreds of others. They are like bees in their cleverness, knowing how
to tunnel in wood, dig deep pits in the ground, or make nests of mud.
Mr. Kellogg, a very wise man, and young to be so wise, tells of one
interesting little wasp, called the thread-waisted sand-digger, which
lives in California in the salt-marshes. These marshes are covered by
plants, but in between are little smooth places covered with a
glistening crust of salt. It is in these open spots that Mrs.
Sand-Digger makes her home. She has strong jaws, and with these she cuts
out a neat little circle of salty crust. Then she begins to dig a
tunnel, humming away to herself all the time. After the hole is ready
she very carefully backs out of it and puts a circular door on.
"Then she flies away to find food to store up for her children. These
babies like tender, green inch-worms, so Mrs. Digger-Wasp hunts around
until she finds a fat one, and then proceeds to paralyze it, so that it
will stay quietly in the house until the babies are ready to eat it, for
baby digger-wasps are little cannibals, preferring living caterpillars
to any pre-digested spiders or flies. It is very wonderful that Mrs.
Digger-Wasp knows where to sting a caterpillar in order to paralyze it
and yet not kill it. But she does. Perhaps you remember that insects
have knots of nerve cells, connected by nerve threads, extending from
one end of the body to the other? Jimmie remembers that I pinched him to
illustrate this point. The knot on the top of the food-tubes is the
brain, then underneath there are usually three in the thorax and several
in the abdomen. Well, Mrs. Digger-Wasp stings one or more of these
little knots, which we call ganglia. That paralyzes the young inch-worm,
so that it becomes limp and helpless, but still lives. Then Mrs. Wasp
picks it up and carries it to her house, and packs it in the bottom of
the tunnel.
"After putting in five or ten she lays an egg, fastening it on the body
of one of the worms. She backs out of the tunnel, and flies off to
collect balls of dirt. With these she fills up the tunnel completely.
Carefully she puts the little round door on. One day some one saw her do
a curious thing. She wished to be very sure that the door was fast shut.
Perhaps it did not fit well. So she found a tiny pebble, held it in her
jaws, and hammered the door down with it. Wasn't that a clever thing for
a wasp to do? The door closed, this is all the attention she gives to
baby digger-wasps. She has put in plenty of food, even for the hungriest
larva. Now it must look out for itself, eat, grow fat and strong, and
then dig its way out into the salt-marsh.
"Mrs. Eumenes is a good-looking little wasp dressed in black and yellow.
She is a mason, making a pretty mud vase for a home. The clay, or mud,
she moistens, then moulds it, little by little, into the vase, which she
fastens on to a twig. Some mud-daubers make small cylinders placed side
by side. Into these they put stung spiders, after tearing off their legs
to make sure they will not recover and run away before the eggs hatch.
Sometimes the mud-daubers plaster up the keyholes in a house, and so
have snug homes.
"One day last summer, as I was sitting outside my cabin, I noticed a
wasp carrying something green in its mouth. It came close to my head,
then finally crawled up under the shingles on the side wall. All the
afternoon it came and went, each time bringing something green. The next
afternoon I was loading my guns, and had put a hollow gun-barrel on a
table at my side. Soon I heard a whir of insect wings, and there, on the
table, was my wasp friend. It walked up and down, examining very
carefully the hollow barrel, then cautiously it crawled in. In about
five minutes it crawled out again and flew away. Soon it was back with a
piece of green in its mouth. It crawled into the barrel and left the
green. Six times the wasp did this; then my curiosity became so great I
could wait no longer. When she flew away I tapped the barrel on the
table and emptied out six little green worms, all limp and still. But
Mrs. Wasp was back again, and I guiltily withdrew. She had brought the
seventh worm, and when she saw the six lying on the table she was much
puzzled. She went around and poked each one to see whether it was limp,
fearing, perhaps, that she had not stung them hard enough; but, finding
them helpless, she picked them up one by one and patiently carried them
back into the gun-barrel. Three times I emptied them out, and three
times she put them back, then flew away, never to return. I suppose the
last time she went in she laid the egg among the little worms, and then,
her duty done, was off to find another good place to start a family.
"Have you ever seen a big cicada which makes the long, rasping sound in
the trees? Some wasps like these very much for food. So, when cicada
sings, Mrs. Wasp swoops down on it, stings it, and then, big and clumsy
as it is, carries it to her home for her children to feast upon."
"A cicada is three or four times as large as a wasp, isn't it?" asked
Mrs. Reece.
"Yes; but there is nothing the wasps can't do," replied Ben Gile.
"I should think not!" exclaimed Peter, who by this time was able to
smile again.
"The trout are ready, Ben," said Adam, "and everything else, too, I
guess."
With running and laughter the children were soon about the fire, eating
their last delicious out-of-door dinner.