Part 19

Anybody would think you had seen a cockroach.

What has she found, John?

Oh, it is a walking stick!

Why do I call it that?

Look and see.

Does it not look like a stick?

And does it not walk?

Then why is not walking stick a good name for it?

May thinks its legs look like a collection of pine needles, for they are green and flat on the upper joints.

It is as pretty as it is queer, with its brown body and its green legs.

This is the male walking stick; the female has brown legs. She is brown all over, just the color of dried leaves, and she is not as slender as her mate.

Mollie thinks it is the long and slender thorax that makes the walking stick look so queer.

See its thorax. Its six legs are attached to its thorax, which is as long and as slender as the abdomen.

John thinks it looks queer because everything about it is so long and slender.

Long antennae, long legs, long thorax, long abdomen--that is Mr. Walking Stick.

Sir, why do you have such long antennae? Can you hear and feel and smell extra well because of them?

I wish you could tell us about them.

Now where is it?

Oh, yes, it is standing on that brown twig. It is so nearly the color of the twig and so much the shape of a little stick itself, that it is not easy to find it.

There, it is walking off again.

It has a good name, for I am sure that if a stick tried to walk, it could not do it more awkwardly.

See now, what it is doing, hanging by one foot from that twig.

How still it is.

Who would imagine, seeing it thus for the first time, that it was a living creature?

The walking sticks feed on leaves, and I suppose their queer shape and their color protect them from being eaten by birds.

A bird would have to be very close to a walking stick to tell it from a twig.

The female drops the eggs on the ground, and leaves them to hatch out and make their way in the world as best they can.

The young walking sticks look just like their parents, only of course they are very small, and they are green in color, like the leaves they eat.