My Studio Neighbors

If with the point of our knife-blade, holding it in the direction of the insect's body, we now touch its tail, what a display of vehement acrobatics! Instantly the agile body is bent backward in a loop, while the teeth fasten to the knife-blade with an audible click. If our finger-tip is substituted for the steel, the force of the stroke and the prick and grip of the jaws are unpleasantly perceptible. In order to fully comprehend the make-up of this curious cave-dweller we must turn biologists for the moment. He must be considered from the evolutionary stand-point, or at least from the stand-point of comparative anatomy. The first discovery that we make is that as we now see him he is crawling on his back--a fact which seems to have escaped his biographers heretofore. It is, in truth, the underside of his head which is uppermost at the mouth of the burrow, and his six zigzag legs are distorted backward to enable him to keep this contrary position. And what a hideous monster is this, whose flat, metallic, dirt-begrimed face stares skyward from this circular burrow! Well might it strike terror to the heart of the helpless insect which should suddenly find himself confronted by the motionless stare of these four cruel, glistening black eyes! But he is now a "fish out of water," and is about as helpless, nature never having intended him to be seen outside of his burrow--at least, in this present form. There he dwells, setting his circular trap at the mouth of his pitfall, and waiting for the voluntary sacrifice of his insect neighbors to fill his maw.