17/63 They fetched up all their friends and relations. Strange beetles--beetles from other families, with no claim on us whatever--got to hear about the thing, and came in hordes, and tried to rob our blackbeetles of it. By the end of a week we had lured into our kitchen every beetle that wasn't lame for miles round. We should clear the suburb at one swoop. The beetles had now been eating this poison steadily for ten days, and he said that the end could not be far off. |