Woodland Tales Part 12

Go forth and look for it, ye Woodcrafters. You will find it throughout Eastern America on the edge of every wood. Its flower is like a purple-brown sweet-pea, and is in bloom all summer long. Follow down its vine, dig out a few of the potatoes or nuts, and try them, raw, boiled, or if ye wish to eat them as Indian Cake, clean them, cut them in slices, dry till hard, pound them up into meal, and make a cake the same as you would of oatmeal.

The wild things love them, the Indians love them, and this was the bread of the wood-witch. The books call it Bog Potato and Ground Nuts. It is the third secret of the woods.

TALE 45

The Mud-dauber Wasp

If you look under the roof of any wooden barn in Eastern America you are likely to see the nest of the common Mud-wasp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Mud-dauber Wasp (life size)]

If you look on warm sunny days along the edge of some mud puddle you are sure to see a curious steel-blue wasp, with a very thin waist, working away at a lump of mud. She seems to be breathing hard with her body, as she works with her yellow legs, but she finally goes off laden with a gob of mud. This is the Mud-wasp at work, building a strong mud-nest for her family. The nest is the one we have seen hung under the roof of the shed, always put where no rain can reach it.

In the drawing are two of these nests.

Once the cradle is ready, the mother Wasp goes spider-hunting. Whenever she can find a spider, she pounces on it, and with her sting, she stabs it in the body, so as to paralyze it, but not kill it. Then she carries it to the mud cell and packs it in, at the far end. Many spiders are caught and preserved this way, for they do not usually die though they cannot move.

When the cell is full, the Wasp lays an egg on the last spider, and seals up the opening with a mud lid.

Very soon the egg hatches out a little white grub which begins on the spider next to him, eating the legs first, and the body last, so as to keep it alive as long as possible, though of course the spider has no feeling. Then he eats the next spider, and the next, growing as he eats, until he nearly fills the cell, and the spiders are all eaten up.

Now the grub goes to sleep, and next spring comes out as a full-grown Mud-wasp to do exactly as the mother did, though it never saw that Mother or had a lesson from any one in the many strange things it must do to live.

I went into my boat-house to-day, November 20, 1919, to get a mud nest for this drawing. There were 86 on the roof; some of them with 20 or 30 cells, and besides there was a lot of paper nests by other Wasps. The nest I took had two cells, one open and empty, and the other with a mud lid on tight. This held a long, shiny brown transparent case, in which was a white grub much too small for the big coat he was wearing. The grub was sound asleep, and would have come out next spring, as a big steel-blue Mud-wasp had I let him alone. But there are plenty of Mud-wasps so I fed him to the Chicadees, which likely is what Mother Carey would have done.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Cicada and the Katydid (life size)]

TALE 46

The Cicada and the Katydid

Once upon a time, long, long ago, the birds whose job it was to make the woods merry with their songs, decided to go on strike. They said, "We have sung all day, all springtime, and half way through the summer, but now we are moulting, the weather is frightfully hot; we need a rest, and we are going to stop singing, to take a holiday."

Then Dame Nature, who is sometimes called the All-mother, or Mother Carey, said: "Dear me, this will never do! No songbirds, woods silent all through the dog-days. Now who will be strike-breakers and volunteer to supply the music till the birds get once more in a good humour?"

Then up at that question got a long-winged insect like a big fly, and a long-legged insect like a green gra.s.shopper, and both said at once, "I will." Amid low murmurs of "Scab! Scab!" from many of the Wood-birds.

"You. I forgot that you two had any voices at all!" said Mother Carey.

Then the long-winged creature, whose name is Cicada, began, "True, my voice isn't much, but I have invented a most successful musical Castanet. Listen!"

Then he began an extraordinary racket like an alarm clock, a threshing machine, and a buzz-saw all going together. He filled the grove with his noise, and set all the woodfolk laughing with his funny performance.

Though, of course, he didn't mean to be funny; he thought it was fine.

Then as the Cicada ceased, Mother Carey said to the Green Hopper, whose name was Katy, "Now, Katy, what can you do?"

"I do not brag of my voice, dear Mother," said she, "but I am a thrilling performer on the violin."

Then she humped herself up over a green fiddle that she had under her cloak, and nearly deafened them with its hoa.r.s.e screechings.

There was no doubt that these two could make as much noise as a wood full of birds; both were eager to take sole charge, and a bitter dispute arose as to whose idea it was first.

But Mother Carey settled it by dividing the time. "You," she said to Cicada, "can take charge of the music by day, and you," she said to the Green one, "must take it up at sundown in place of the nightingale, and keep it up, till the night breaks, and both of you continue till the frost comes, or until the birds are back on the job."

That is how it all came about.

But there is considerable feeling yet among the Katies, that they should get all the night work, and never be seen performing. They think that their ancestor was the original inventor of this cheap subst.i.tute for bird song. And it is made all the worse by a division among themselves.

Some say "she did" and some say "she didn't." If you notice in early August, they are nearly all shouting, "Katy-did." Then by the end of the month, "Katy-didn't" is stronger. In September it is still mixed. In October their work is over, the chorus ended, but you hear an occasional "Katy-did" and finally as late as Indian Summer, which is Hallowe'en, I have heard the last of the fiddlers rasp out "she did"; and do it in daytime, too, as though to flout the followers of Cicada. And, if the last word be truth, as they say, we may consider it settled, that Katy really and truly _did_. And yet I believe next year the same dispute will arise, and we shall have the noisy argument all over again.

If you look at the portraits of Cicada, the Hotweather-bug or Locust, and of the Katydid, you will not see their musical instruments very plainly, but believe me they have them; and you can hear them any late summer hot-weather time, in any part of the Eastern States and some parts of southern Canada.

And now let me finish with a secret. Katy is not a lady at all, but a he-one disguised in green silk stockings, and a green satin dress.

TALE 47

The Digger Wasp that Killed the Cicada

Strange things are done in the realm of Mother Carey; strange things and cruel. At least so they seem to us, for we do not know the plan that is behind them. We know only that sometimes love must be cruel. I am going to tell you of a strange happening, that you may see any hot day in August. And this is how it came about.

At that meeting in the woods when the Cicada and the Katydid undertook to be musicians, while the birds were on strike, there was one strong insect who gave off an angry "_Bizz, Bizz_" that sounded like "_Scab, Scab_." That was the big yellow-and-black Digger Wasp, the biggest of the wasps, with a sting that is as bad as that of a baby rattlesnake.

And that very day she declared war on the Cicada and his kind. The Katydids she could not touch, because the Wasp cannot see at night.

But the Cicada was easy to find. As soon as the day got hot, and that awful buzzing began in the trees, the Big Digger got her sting ready, and went booming along in the direction of the sound.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Digger Wasp (life size)]

Now Mother Carey had given the Cicada bright eyes and strong wings, and it was his own business to take care of himself; but he was so pleased with his music that he never saw the fierce Digger Wasp, till she charged on him. And before he could spread his wings, she had stabbed him through.

His song died away in a few shrieks, and then the Cicada lay still. But not dead, for the Digger had stuck her poison dagger into the nerve centre, so that he was paralyzed and helpless, but still living.

Now the Digger set about a plan. She wanted to get that Cicada body into her den, to feed her young ones with it. But the Cicada was bigger and heavier than she was, so that she could not carry it. However, she was bent on doing it, she got all ready, took tight hold with her claws, then swooped from the tree, flying as strongly as she could, till the weight of the Cicada brought her to the ground within fifty feet, while the den was fully a hundred feet away. But the Wasp dragged the Cicada up the trunk of another tree, then took another long sloping flight as before. One more climb and skid down, brought her to her den--a hole in a bank that she had dug out; that is why she is called the Digger Wasp.

The pa.s.sage was a foot long and had a crook in the middle. At the end was a round room an inch and a half high. Here the Digger left her victim's body and right on its breast, to one side, laid an egg.

This hatched in two or three days, and began to feed on the Cicada. In a week it had eaten the Cicada and grown to be a big fat grub. Then it spun a coc.o.o.n, and made itself into a bundle-baby, resting all autumn and all winter in that dark den.

But when the spring came with its glorious wakening up, great changes came over the bundle-baby of the Digger. It threw off the coc.o.o.n and its outer skin, and came forth from the gloom into the sunshine, a big strong Digger Wasp with a sting of its own, and a deadly feud with all screaming Cicadas. Although it never saw its mother, or got any lessons from her, it goes after the buzzing hotweather-bugs, when August comes, and treats them exactly as she did.

TALE 48

How the Indian Summer Came

Wahkonda, the Great Spirit, the Ruler of the World, had found pleasure the whole summer long in making mountains, lakes, and forests. Then when the autumn came, and the leaves fell from the trees, He lighted His pipe and sat down to look over the things He had made.