THE LIFE OF THE THREAD-LEGGED BUG 155 



of little account in our daily affairs, so the facts of her curious 

 home life have never been chronicled. 



Mating over, and perhaps feeling the paralysis of age creeping 

 over her, tonight she hastens to her duty. 



Among the weathered rafters of a shed, or perhaps an abandoned 

 house, she deposits her tough black eggs. They are cigar-shaped 

 with a slight flaring lip at one end and deeply fluted like a Corin- 

 thian column. One by one they are attached to the roughened 

 surface of the wood. Sometimes but an hour, at others an entire 

 day elapses between the laying of each, thus they rarely appear in 

 clusters. Wherever the parent wanders from day to day, the eggs 

 will be found, one by one in her path. 



From early September until late October, the process goes on, 

 until the first frosts of winter claim the declining creature, leaving 

 only the dormant eggs as evidence of the parent's existence. 



She is a grotesque object at best, this mother, slow and deliberate, 

 with limbs as delicate as threads and a body scarcely more robust. 

 Yet with all her physical shortcomings, she is a personality in her 

 world. 



She has left the common horde of insects and taken up her abode 

 with man. Once, with other arboreal creatures of the clan she 

 lived and died among the foliage, but now she finds human habita- 

 tions to her advantage. Doubtless, in ages past, she was a dominant 

 predacious insect of the air, a hawk in her world, dreaded by 

 others less spry. Now, in her new habitat, after years of disuse, her 

 wings are narrow and degenerate, scarcely capable of easing her fall 

 when dropped from one's hand. Wings have ceased to be a ne- 

 cessity, but other characters, unknown perhaps in other generations, 

 have been acquired. Her legs have grown to immense length with 

 a tiny diameter of corresponding absurdity. The front pair have 

 shortened and developed into spiked and jointed forceps, while the 



