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We will describe it, for it is clearly defined before the intervention of the Wasp. On the surface of the ground, for a length of two paces at most, runs a sinuous line, a beading of crumbled soil, roughly the width of my finger. One need not be a great entomological scholar to recognize, at the first glance, in these pads of raised earth, the trail of a Mole-cricket, the Mole among insects.
I have almost been induced to think this noise serves as a decoy to the male mole-cricket, this being occasionally found in the craw of these birds when shot. Those who may not be acquainted with the cry of the bird or the insect, may imagine the noise of an auger boring oak, or any hard wood, continued, and not broken off, as is the noise of the auger, from the constant changing of the hands.
But, if the mole-cricket ran amok, the queen-wasp went berserk. It was a thing unthinkable that in that moment of triumph she, and the awakening city with her, should be cut off unthinkable and impossible, unthinkable and maddening. Therefore she fought as few wasps have probably fought before or since, and they are pretty expert exponents, and scarcely backward ones, of warfare.
Where can you find fiercer courage than mine; where, bulk for bulk, more mighty strength? What monster, think you, would an elephant, built for burrowing, be? For my weight, I am the strongest thing that lives. One creature, and one only, approaches me; that is the mole-cricket. Let him speak for himself."
I should like to find a mole-cricket, but I don't know if they live about here. Perhaps our soil isn't light enough for them to make their tunnels in, but one ought to find no end of curious burrowing creatures when one is on one's face, besides grubs of moths to hatch afterwards. When I am on my back, I fancy what I shall see most of are spiders.
It goes without saying that the moment the huntress emerged from the ground I proceeded to dig up the track. The Mole-cricket was no longer there. The Tachytes had come too late; and so had I. Well, how right was I to define the Tachytes as a Locust lover! What constancy in the gastronomic rules of the race! And what tact in varying the game, while keeping within the order of the Orthoptera!
The mole-cricket turned up from nowhere in particular, and his voice was the tinkling of a silver bell. It would have taken a score of him to make a mole. "I am older than the mole," he said, "yet from him I take my name. In dry ground I make poor progress; where it is muddy and swampy, I can run through it, like a fish through water.
He looks as though 'he would rush out with a battle-ax on his shoulder to meet a chariot. See how he ogles his fellow!" "Yes; and just behold that bandy-legged hopper, will you? I could walk better than that myself," said the other. "'Sh!" said the mole-cricket. "Here comes the palanquin." Everybody now cast a squint up under their eyebrows, and watched the palanquin go by.
Tarantula, with wicked bright eyes of shining berries, brought up the rear, with the bee, and the mole-cricket, and, with bulgy brown, white-striped body and long wings importantly crossed behind its back, a tsetse of appallingly gigantic size....
For she is always there, in the few observations which chance affords me. A subterranean excursion would not attract the Wasp if it had no object. And its object is certainly the search for some sort of game for her larvae. The inference becomes inevitable: the Anathema Tachytes, who explores the Mole-cricket's galleries, gives her larvae this same Mole-cricket as their food.
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