WOPPIT THE WOOD-EATER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20324, 3 August 1929, Page 4 (Supplement)

WOPPIT THE WOOD-EATER.

BY EDITH HOWES.

From a little egg hidden under a loose scrap of bark Woppit tho Wood-eater hatched into a grub, so small that you would never notice him, with a pale, creamy body and nut-brown head. He had nothing that you would call legs, only some tiny lumps of fat under him; yet with these he could pull himself along, wrinkling up his body and then outstretching it to help. But if he had no legs he decidedly had jaws. Curved and hard they were, and tremendously powerful and large for such a mite. He had need of them and all their strength, for his food was to be wocd, the wood of the tree in which he was hatched.

Being hungry, he soon began to eat. rasping at the trunk and cutting off minute fragments and swallowing them The wood was fairly tender here—for thai reason his mother had choson tho spot—and in a surprisingly short time he had bored his way into it and had gone from sight. And well it was that he did so. for in a few minutes a hunting spider passed that way Peering about with her sharp eyes, she spied tho tiny round hole ho had left behind him, and she poked a claw within to feel for him. But he was out of reach. He was boring fast into safety, into the warm darkness of the trunk, into the sappy, scented tissues that were to be at oner- his home and his food.

In the day and nights, and weeks and months and years that followed, he went in and in and down and down, to the very heart-wood of the great tree. The walls he pierced hard enough now, but his jaws grew, and were equal to their task, even as he grew long and wide and fat with his incessant eating.

It was a quiet. 6ecure lifo there in the heart of the tree. No enemy could come in, for though his burrow was wide now to suit the width of his body, yet its only opening to the outside world was that tiniest of tiny holes he had loft behind him on the first day of his life. Any creature small enough to enter was too small to do any harm to the great fellow he had now become. He was secret and safe, alone in the depths of the trunk.

Three years ho spent in that retired place, eating, growing, moulting, and eating, growing, moulting again. Now he began to tunnel outwards from the heart of the tree toward the surface. He was fnll-grown, nearly three inches long, a huge creamy-lwdicd, brown-headed follow, plump with rich food, and he felt the Great Change approaching. Ho was less hungry, less active than he bid been. .He had a desire to lie still in his burrow and sleep. But there was a thing to do first. Aftet the change his jaws would bo gone; unless he tunnelled out to the bark now he would wake to find himself htipless, imprisoned in a woody grave, wiltb no tools to pierce its walls. Ha must make an opening to the outeT world that he might escape when his time for flight bad come.

Patiently yet quickly he bored, till at last he c3mo out to tha bark. He pierced that, and felt the strange cool night air of the bush on his head. He drew quickly back. The time was coming when he would fly eagerly into that sweet tir, but it was not yet. He plugged the hole with the pieces ho had bitten out, and heaped chips behind it. These would serve to keep out intruders, yet could easily be pushed out of the way when he was ready to come out. But ho had not finished tunnelling. After all, some hungry enemy, pushing aside the chips, might enter the burrow. Such enemy must be led astray, so the wily Woppit made a decoy passage, not slanting downwards like his own, but leading from tho entrance straight into.the treu An intruder would naturally follow thai, but would find only a blank wall at tho end. He would then probably retrace his steps and try the sloping passage; but Woppit would not bo found in that either. No, he was no simpleton, this Woppit the Wood-eater. He had his plan. He was not to be taken unawares. (To be continued.)