288 HOUSEHOLD INSECTS 



THE CHEESE AND MEAT SKIPPER 



Piophila casei 



It is rather disconcerting, not to say humiliating, for 

 the lady of the house, at the last moment, to find the cheese 

 ordered for a chafing-dish party, full of small, white, 

 lively, and rather disgusting maggots. This is not an 

 uncommon experience by any means. Grocers always 



Fig. 96. — The parent fly of a cheese skipper. (X 9.) 



keep their cheese beneath fine-meshed wire netting ; 

 but there are many opportunities for the small fly, parent 

 of these skippers, to obtain entrance within and deposit 

 her eggs. 



The insect that lays these eggs is a small, shining-black 

 fly scarcely one-half the size of a house-fly (Fig. 96). The 

 eggs hatch into small white slender maggots that become 

 about one-third of an inch in length. These maggots 

 possess remarkable powers of leaping and on this account 

 are called "skippers." They have no legs, yet by bring- 

 ing the two ends of the body together and suddenly re- 



