“Well, I live now,” said Mrs. Hessian Fly, “and I am interesting enough for any use. I don’t make galls like so many flies, but simply lay my eggs in young blades of wheat, and when my little red babies hatch, they have only to crawl down and fasten themselves to the tender stalk, just below the ground. Don’t they love the sap, though? A field of wheat looks pretty sick after they have worked on it a while. Sometimes the wheat midges help them and then it is good-by to the wheat. Mrs. Wheat Midge, you know, lays her eggs in the opening flower of the grain, and her babies eat the pollen and ovule. You may guess what happens then.”
“I think it is real horrid to do that,” said Ruth.
“And what do you know about it, pray?” retorted Mrs. Hessian Fly. “We must all eat to live.”
“We certainly must,” said a house fly, flitting up with a loud buzz. “I have just escaped with my life. A cook wanted to take it because I tried to lay some eggs on her meat. What better place could a fly ask, I’d like to know? If Mrs. Blow Fly had been there, she would have put her eggs on that meat, screen or no screen. She is a most determined body and she can drop her eggs through the finest mesh, if she makes up her mind to do it.”
“Is Mrs. Blow Fly that big, buzzing, blue-bodied thing that is such a botheration?” asked Ruth.
“She’s big and blue, and she buzzes, or talks, with her wings, as we all do,” answered Mrs. House Fly, with dignity, “but she isn’t a thing. She’s a fly. There are hundreds of different kinds of flies, I’d like you to understand. The kind like me live in houses, but some prefer stables. They seem to like to stay with horses and cows, and are rather common. They have beautiful eyes, though, and plenty of them. Would you believe it, my head is nearly all eyes? I have thousands of tiny ones in my two big ones, not to mention the three single ones at the top of my head.”
“Gracious!” said Ruth. “No wonder it is so hard to catch you. But doesn’t it make you dizzy when you walk upside down, and how do you keep from falling?”
“Of course we don’t get dizzy and it is easy enough to keep from falling if you have pads and fine hairs on your feet. They just hold you to the place you are standing on. Men seem to consider this quite a wonderful thing. One of them has written some poetry about it. This is how it goes: