143 
A BAND OF HUNTERS 
of them have a beakful of poison, and their bite 
causes a painful swelling, and sometimes serious 
illness. Some ten or twelve years ago the papers 
made a good deal of a kissing-bug scare that 
spread over the country like wild-fire. It was oc¬ 
casioned by one of these human-blood lovers hav¬ 
ing bitten a young woman on the lip; even Aunt 
Ruth here was afraid to go outside for many 
weeks. Two species of the clan have been termed 
kissing bugs. They are found from the Central 
Mississippi valley to the tropics, and are thought 
to breed in the nests of mice just as their kin the 
giant bedbugs do. They fly mostly at dusk and 
in the early eveningtide. 
“ One of the commonest assassin bugs in the 
South is that known as the wheel bug. The ne¬ 
groes term it the devil’s riding horse. I haven’t 
seen one for some time. Perhaps because I 
haven’t been specially watching. We used to see 
their odd-looking eggs attached to the bark of 
trees and on old rail fences in the late fall and 
winter. They are like tiny leather milk bottles, 
grouped in hexagonal clusters, some seventy or 
more in the lot. Each bottle is capped with a 
tight-fitting lid which the young bug pushes off 
when it is ready to come out in late spring. It is 
a queer-looking creature, with a blood-red abdo¬ 
men and thorax sprinkled with black. As it 
walks it curves up its abdomen in a funny hitch- 
