The Wit of the Wild 



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This done, she seized the lifeless caterpillar 

 by its head and dragged it backward into the 

 hole, humming a song of success the while. 

 For a whole minute she stayed there, doubtless 

 engaged in producing and affixing an egg to the 

 caterpillar's abdomen as it lay coiled in its 

 sepulcher. 



And as the captor came out and excitedly 

 crowded stones and sticks and lumps of earth 

 down the cavity, and finally scratched over it 

 the hiding dust, I pondered upon the strange- 

 ness of this arrangement its careless cruelty 

 and boundless sacrifice of the present for the 

 sake of a future the exact and diligent worker 

 would never share perhaps never see. For 

 the worm is buried there to serve as food for the 

 larval wasp that, some sixty hours hence, will 

 be hatched from the egg and find itself fiercely 

 hungry. 



Sometimes this wasp will take a pebble in her 

 jaws and with it pound and smooth the surface 

 of the hidden pit, the better to destroy traces 

 of digging. 



Since that afternoon I am not sure that I 



