12 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles 



like a bill, proboscis or beak which they poke into 

 the plant as does the squash bug and thus suck its 

 juice, poke into the skin of other bugs and cater- 

 pillars and suck out the juices, or poke into our 

 skins hke some well-known bugs, and thus suck 

 our juice, or poke their bills into the openings of 

 bivalves (clams), into the bodies of snails and even 

 into the bodies of small fishes and suck their juices, 



as do the large water bugs. 

 While I am dictating 

 this, there is in one of my 

 aquariums in front of me 

 a dead goldfish killed by 

 a water bug much smaller 

 than the fish. These water 

 bugs are not always successful in their attempts 

 to suck the juices out of other creatures. One 

 I kept in an aquarium thrust its long imperti- 

 nent nose into the shell of a fresh-water clam. 

 It was a small bivalve, about the size of one's 

 finger-nail, but when it felt that inquisitive nose 

 come into its private apartment it closed its little 

 doors tightly and quickly, and for three days that 

 water bug was forced to swim around with a clam 



