A Miracle of Vitality

AFTER an unusually cool September 1933, the first day of October dawned fogless and hot, warming up before the day’s end to around the 100 mark. The peaches had been miserable and undersized, many rotting before ripening. Late in the afternoon I took a basket to glean the last of them, which had been thudding to the ground during the hot hours of the day. The mass of rotten fruit under the tree was fermenting, and the bees were gorging their fill. Suddenly I beheld an insect of such size and beauty that I called my husband from a near-by orange tree, where he was pruning. In amazement we gazed upon this stranger, a creature belonging, as we could see, to the wasp family, but with jointed legs as long as those of a big grasshopper, triple-spurred, steely black, with persimmon wings. The segmented iridescent belly was palpitating with apparent joy at the sweetness of his heady drink; he walked nimbly hither and thither, delicately curving to the roundness of the fruit as he supped. He was a good two inches long, his great body connected by a tiny wirelike waist.

Here was a chance to make a capture. Rushing into the house for a glass and a stiff piece of cardboard, my husband standing guard the while so that we should not lose him, I crept up, slipped the glass over him. and then slid the cardboard under him with astonishing ease. There was no resistance, no fluttering or buzzing, even after he found himself imprisoned. Raising him for closer inspection, we watched him bump his bewildered head here and there, turning with great determination first one way, then another, as if saying, ‘Oh, this is the way out, then. How very curious . . . dear me, how very annoying! ’

We stuck a straw under the edge of the glass when we put him on the table, to give him a breath of air; by this time he was opening his huge mandibles in the shape of ice tongs and making rushes, straining against the sides of the glass in an effort to seize the unseen enemy. Suddenly he found the short straw; laying hold of this, he lifted it, and with it the edge of the glass, as a man might use a lever on a heavy beam. For an instant it seemed as if he might topple the glass over and escape, then the straw cracked under the pressure of his wicked pincers. Again and again he turned to vent his fury against the straw.

Having no alcohol, we decided that the best way to preserve him intact was to cut off his supply of air. Knowing that some insects are mortally sensitive to this method, we congratulated ourselves on this simple course of procedure. By morning we could mount him, intact and lifelike.

Much to our consternation, we found him displaying a greater fury the following day; his energy was intensified as he reached high and low in search of something to grapple with. This was disturbing, and after my husband left I carried him over to our English neighbors for inspection and a consultation concerning the execution. Very much interested and full of good advice they were. Had I not noticed on the edge of town the sign, U. S. BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, housed in an old dwelling just within the city limits?

I found that the entomology was limited to agricultural pests, such as scale, weevils, and aphids, but there was a reference book on hand, and here we found our captive classified as the Tarantula Hawk, a tropical insect of Brazil, Mexico, and Texas — occasionally found as far north as Southern California. Spiders and other insects are stung into a state of paralysis and laid beside the eggs; the young, when they are hatched, feed upon the prone victims.

‘Shall I give him a dose of cyanide and mount him for you?’ said the obliging man in charge. It was a relief to feel that the execution, so cruelly postponed, was at last to take place under professional hands. I could already imagine the rare insect standing lifelike on his pedestal while the boys — we run a school — clustered about him fascinated.

Very gratefully, after an interval of waiting while the mysteries of death via cyanide took place, I accepted the mounted specimen, all pinned into place with very fine hairlike affairs, especially designed for delicate wings and bodies. Through the exact centre of the forepart of the body ran a pin, firmly holding the insect in an alert standing position. The other pins had not been used for piercing, but had been put here and there for holding the six legs in a natural position. Under a glass at home he looked very satisfactory indeed.

It was while preening myself upon this achievement that a slight palpitation caught my horrified eyes. In fascination I gazed more closely — the segments along the glossy armored belly were moving rhythmically. In horrid suspense I waited for each motion to diminish and watched for the hoped-for final palpitations. Doubtless, like the motions of a ‘dead’ snake, these were mysterious reflexes. In this hope I went uneasily to bed.

The next morning we arose expecting to see the stark dead captive skewered securely in position, but found instead a very angry insect bumping about with the pin through his body, somersaulting in frantic efforts like a pole-vaulter. The strength which it had exerted in lifting the firmly driven pin out of the cork pedestal seemed incredible. Such vitality and fight filled us with awe.

In a frantic effort to end this torture, and still hoping to preserve in all its beauty this strange visitor, I rushed for the ant-powder tin. Since ants have a hard glossy surface and great vitality, this might kill without destroying. Alas, it only made matters worse, and for the first time the sting came into sight, as repeated efforts to pierce its own body were frustrated by the resistance of the stiff pin. The thing began to assume the proportions of a major martyrdom, and in desperation I rushed to the bathroom for a bottle of saponified ammonia and bathed him in that.

He raged on. Each minute I expected him to curl up and die, but he appeared, if anything, to be refreshed, and continued to rush about. His mandibles opened wide, and tiny hairlike feelers thrust themselves out in trembling agony. Finally, unable to endure it any longer, I toppled him into kerosene, which finished the tragedy. All the lustre of wing and body gone, he now stands on the bookcase, an everlasting reproach to attempts of amateurs at murder.

But who can explain this miracle of vitality?