Madame Redbelt

I WAS sitting on the stone wall waiting for the August sun to knock off its day's work, and idly watching a gray spider that had spread a gauzy net across an opening among the loose slabs, when Madame Redbelt came and sat down beside me.

I looked for trouble at once, for Madame Redbelt is a wasp, and many wasps have a habit not only of dining off spiders, but of preferring them as food for their babies, which has made hard feeling between the two branches of the insect race, from which only the most enlightened members are free. Therefore I was anxious, but when I saw the visitor coolly running about underneath the web, while the gray spider peered down with languid wonder at her activity in the heat, apparently not fearing her at all, I aroused myself to sharper attention.

Then I saw that she was not one of the broad-winged brown wasps so numerous about this house in the edge of the woods, but a slender, thread-waisted one, exceedingly active afoot, and carrying her wings like two slats along her back; in fact, each was folded up like a fan of three sticks.

Right behind the flexible rod of a waist, where the body swelled again, was a bright red band; and so I called her Madame Redbelt, for I did not then know her book-name, which is Ammophila urnaria.  You may read scientific history of her, if you wish, in that fine treatise, "The Instincts and Habits of the Solitary Wasps," by George W. and Elizabeth G. Peckham.

A wide crack in the top of the wall, under the web, was filled with dry earth in which a few small weeds grew, and this tiny garden seemed greatly to interest the little lady, who darted hither and thither examining every inch.

Suddenly she halted and began to scratch with her foremost feet, sending the grains of sand flying backward and deepening a hole precisely as does my fox-terrier Waggles when he hopes he has found the hiding place of a chipmunk.

In a minute or so she changed her method and began to dig with her jaws. She would scrape down a quantity of earth, gather it into a bundle between her chin and elbows, so to speak, and then backing out, would carry it well back from the entrance and fling it away with a quick flirt, as though glad to be rid of it. Now and then she would pause and choose where she would next drop her load, or stop and push away the loose earth to prevent its rolling back toward her trench, and all together her movements were most human and interesting.

I leaned down close to her without her caring, yet every few minutes she would stop work and walk all about her narrow domain, and sometimes make short flights here and there, as if to make sure no danger were near; but these halts were brief, and at the end of twenty minutes or so she had almost disappeared in her excavation—just the tip of her body with its sting showing at the top of the ground, and two hind feet clinging to the surface.

Now it was plain why her wings were folded so snugly on her back—the ordinary shape would never do for a miner, like this industrious little lady.

She worked on as hard as ever, bringing up earth and pebbles, piling them in a ring around her, and then diving after more; and all the time she sang a low, contented, humming song which told of hope and joy. Why not? She was constructing a home—a place for her babies, where the first object of her existence, the limit of her desire and ambition, should be satisfied. The sun shone, the ground was dry and warm, no parasites were near to make her anxious nor enemies to alarm her. Why shouldn't she sing of her content and gladness?

For some time then I noticed that she went no deeper, so I concluded that she was hollowing out a chamber at the end of her sloping drift, and I was right.

It was just half an hour by the watch from the time she began (5 p.m.) until she quit digging. Then Madame Redbelt looked tired as she shook and brushed the dust from her black satin dress and sauntered out into the sunshine to rest a while.

But this was only the first stage of her proceedings. Soon she was running about with her head down, evidently in search of something. Every pebble she came to she would measure with her feelers, as a workman uses a pair of calipers. Presently one seemed to suit her and she picked it up in her jaws and trotted off in great haste. Now, try to lift a stone twice as big as your head and you will appreciate the strength of this tiny miner, who carried her burden in her teeth a good deal easier than you could carry a proportionate weight in your arms—indeed, you could scarcely lift a proportionate weight.

Running straight to her hole she dropped the pebble into its mouth, where it lodged neatly in the funnel-shaped top, forming a plug, or cover. I could see, however, that a crevice remained at one side, and Madame Redbelt saw it, too, and at once found a smaller pebble with which to stop the gap.

Then turning her back she scraped over the stones a quantity of loose earth until all traces of a hole were concealed. And now, having shut and locked her door, Madame Redbelt ran 'round and 'round as if to make sure nobody had seen her do it, and then flew away.

I sat watching until dark. Every half an hour or so the owner came back, looked at her property and left it untouched. Then I put some bits of leaf on the spot, so that I might know of any disturbance, and said good-night.

Next morning (the 28th) the leaves had been thrown aside, but I saw nothing of Madame Redbelt until late afternoon, when she half dug another tunnel, close by the first one. This she finished on the 29th, but I did not see her again until the third morning (30th) about eight o'clock (when the sun first reached that spot), when I found her busily closing a new nest between the other two. She put into it a pebble that nearly filled it, then slowly packed armfuls of clay, bits of stick and stone over it, forcing the latter well into the ground. Often she would try a bit that would not fit the place to her liking, and it was amusing to see her toss it aside with an impatient gesture, just as a man does when choosing proper stones for a wall.

She was very suspicious now, and at my least movement would dart away, but quickly return.

It was ten o'clock when she finished filling in the nest, and then she departed for half an hour as if to rest, and probably to get a drink, which such wasps take frequently. In her returning, by the way, she almost always arrived from a certain direction and first alighted on a particular stone, where she cautiously surveyed the land before going in a roundabout way to her holes.

At 10.30 a.m. she began a fourth tunnel within an inch or two of the others, and worked at it with feverish haste, often lying on her back to dig, until the chamber was completed, as before, in just thirty minutes.

She then went out upon a warm stone and quietly rested for a few minutes, then ran away into the grass, but by 11.20 she was back again and carefully examining every nook and corner of her estate, now and then entering and repairing the two open holes. Her movements were quick and cautious, and my least change of attitude alarmed her, whereas when she was digging she seemed careless of my presence; and soon she disappeared, leaving the last tunnel quite open. This, I fancied, was because she had been unable to find any suitable cork, so I gathered a few little pebbles of about the right size and laid them near the nest, when to my dismay one rolled halfway down the sloping tunnel.

Now that her quarters seemed prepared something interesting was likely to follow, so I got an umbrella and stayed in the hot sun to see what it might be. A half hour of patience met its reward. Suddenly Madame Redbelt alighted upon the accustomed stone, astride of a smooth, yellow caterpillar, gripped near its head in her jaws.

I have never been able, among the rocky ridges here, to follow and watch an Ammophila catch a caterpillar, but I know from what others have seen how it is done. The capture may be made so far from the nest that an hour or more must be spent in bringing home the prey.

When the wasp finds a caterpillar she springs upon it and a fight for life begins. The poor worm leaps and curls and thrashes about, using every art and weapon it possesses, but to little avail, for the wasp, striding over it and seizing its head in her jaws, drives in her sting until movement ceases and the caterpillar lies outstretched and quiescent. Sometimes a single thrust of the sting suffices, the poison acting like an electric shock; sometimes seven or eight stings are given into several segments.

It all depends upon whether the wasp pierces the central nervous system, which runs along the ventral side of the caterpillar in the form of a cord thickened into a "ganglion" in each segment. Some kinds of wasps seem to know how to strike certain ganglia every time; and this wasp, lifting the larva from the ground so that she may curve the tip of her abdomen underneath it, seems to try to do so, but she is by no means sure in her aim. When the victim has become limp and quiet (though perhaps not dead, but only paralyzed), the wasp usually squeezes its neck in her jaws until that part is thoroughly crushed.

Now, what does she want of the caterpillar—why all this labor and trouble? Because a caterpillar, in her instinct-opinion, is the only thing suitable upon which to lay an egg that needs to be packed away in the earthen chamber so carefully prepared for it, in order that it may hatch in safety; and also because the larva thus to be bred must have food ready for it.

Having subdued her prey, the wasp stands over it lengthwise, picks it up by the neck in her jaws and partly carries, partly drags it, going quickly or slowly according to its weight and the difficulties of the way; and if you interfere she will let it go and fight, but afterward hunt up the lost prey and continue the journey.

No animals have a better sense of locality and direction than the wasps and their relatives, the bees. It is plain that they study the place where their nests are, familiarizing themselves with all its features. Any disturbance of these is sure to be noticed; but experiments designed to ascertain how much of their behavior in this respect arises from discriminating memory and intelligence have had varying results.

Prof. Jacques Loeb tells how an Ammophila laden with a caterpillar too heavy to lift off the ground went around the wall she was accustomed to flying over and worked her way afoot to her nest by an unknown route, then betrayed much stupidity because the hole had been concealed by a clover-blossom. But other individuals have been more clever at detecting deceits practiced upon them by inquisitive naturalists.

Madame Redbelt carried her captive to the mouth of the fourth hole, and, letting it drop, hastily entered the nest, where she at once ran against my fallen pebble, and pulled it out without more ado.

Doubtless she thought it a mere accident, not noticing, or caring nothing for, any odor of my hand that may have lingered about it.

This done, she seized the lifeless caterpillar by its head and dragged it backward into the hole, humming a song of success the while. For a whole minute she stayed there, doubtless engaged in producing and affixing an egg to the caterpillar's abdomen as it lay coiled in its sepulcher.

And as the captor came out and excitedly crowded stones and sticks and lumps of earth down the cavity, and finally scratched over it the hiding dust, I pondered upon the strangeness of this arrangement—its careless cruelty and boundless sacrifice of the present for the sake of a future the exact and diligent worker would never share—perhaps never see. For the worm is buried there to serve as food for the larval wasp that, some sixty hours hence, will be hatched from the egg and find itself fiercely hungry.

Sometimes this wasp will take a pebble in her jaws and with it pound and smooth the surface of the hidden pit, the better to destroy traces of digging.

Since that afternoon I am not sure that I have seen Madame Redbelt. Now and then, it is true, I catch a glimpse of an Ammophila flitting about the stone wall, and perhaps it may sometimes have been she, who remembers—why not?—the very hot days and the gray spider overhead, and the colossal figure that so strangely scrutinized all the work in the tiny triangular garden where her hopes lie buried, and who anxiously watches for their fulfillment.