JUNE 24: Mosquitoes and Snails
“Well, are you here again?” said the Snails to the Mosquitoes.
“We are indeed,” buzzed the Mosquitoes. “But you don’t say that as if you were pleased. In fact, we don’t like your manner at all. We think a little nip and a wee bite might help you. It might make you more polite.”
“Ah, there you are wrong,” said the Snails. “To be sure, our manner was not so very polite. But we don’t feel so polite toward your family. And as for teaching us manners with the aid of a little nip and a wee bite—well, that is absurd, as we have shells and we can go right back into them. We may be slow, but we can get into our shells quickly enough.”
“Yes, cowards,” hissed the Mosquitoes.
“Not at all,” said the Snails. “It’s not cowardly to avoid being bitten. It wouldn’t help any one if we were bitten. There would be no good done because of it. We simply do not wish to be bitten and give you a chance to say:
“‘We bit the Snails to-day. That was part of our pleasure.’ For it is a pleasure to you to bite, and we don’t intend to help along such selfish, mean, cross creatures.”
“Then why are you talking to us?” asked the Mosquitoes.
“Because,” said the Snails, “you have just missed a picnic party that went by here a little time ago. A nice picnic party of children. We won’t tell you where they went—no, indeed. And you’ve lost them now. We only talked to you because we wanted you to miss one horrid adventure. We wouldn’t have wasted our time otherwise. And we talked slowly to give the children more time.” The Snails wiggled and squirmed a little. They were very much pleased with themselves.
But, oh, how mad the mosquitoes were! They buzzed and sang their ugly little songs. They tried to bite the snails, but they had gone inside their shells.
They were so furious that they had wasted all that time. But the snails were happy! They knew that the children were far away by this time, and they had been saved from having the horrid, uninvited mosquitoes go along, too.
As the mosquitoes flew away they said: “Never again will we talk to those slow snails. They make us lose time.”
And the Snails were delighted that their slowness had helped.