Читать книгу Insect Adventures - Fabre Jean-Henri - Страница 10

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Sometimes, when a Mason-bee has stayed too long among the flowers, getting honey for her cell, she finds the cell closed when she returns home. A neighbor Bee has taken the opportunity to lay her eggs there, after finishing the building and stocking it with provisions. The real Bee-owner is shut out.

She does not hesitate long about what to do. After she has examined her former home very carefully, to make sure it is closed against her, she seems to say to herself, “An egg for an egg, a cell for a cell. You’ve stolen my house; I’ll steal yours.” She goes to another Bee’s dwelling and patiently gnaws the mortar lid or door. When she has made an opening, she stands bending over the cell, her head half-buried in it, as if thinking. She goes away, she returns undecidedly; at last she makes up her mind. The other Bees, meanwhile, pay no attention to her, not even the one who laid the egg in the cell.

The Bee who has turned burglar snaps up the strange egg from the surface of the honey and flings it on the rubbish-heap as carelessly as if she were ridding the house of a bit of dirt. Then, although there is already plenty of honey in the cell, she adds more from her own stock, lays her own egg, and closes up the house again. The lid is repaired to look like new and everything restored to order. The Bee has had her revenge; her anger is appeased. Next time she lays an egg it will be in her own cell, unless that has again been seized by another.