There is an old, old story of a great ugly giant, who was called Polyphemus. He had only one eye, and that was in the middle of his forehead. He ate men as quickly as a hungry boy can eat the drumstick of a chicken. That is what the old story tells us.
But the Polyphemus we are to read about was not an ugly old giant. She was a beautiful moth. She was a giant for a moth. She was five inches from one wing tip to the other. Her wings were a beautiful soft brown color, with pink and gray tips. Two soft feelers grew from her head. They looked like slim, dainty, brown feathers.
Each of the back wings of this moth had a big eye-spot. It was not ugly like the old giant’s eye. It was a beautiful deep blue. But I think it is this eye-spot that made a wise man name her after the old giant.
Polyphemus was hanging from an oak twig. She had not been a moth very long. Just that afternoon she had pushed her way out of her cocoon.
Nobody would ever have thought that such a big moth could have come out of so small a cocoon. It was a little brown silk case no bigger than the egg of a little bantam hen.
How hard Polyphemus had worked to get out! First she had to break a hole through the top. Then she pushed and pushed to get her head out. She put one foot out and then another. She pushed and she pulled. By and by she got her head out. Then she caught hold of the side of the cocoon and pulled again. At last her whole body slipped out of the cocoon.
At first one could see no wings on the moth. There was a thick round pad on each of her shoulders. Each pad was about as big as a man’s fingernail, and her body was almost as long as a man’s little finger.
The oak twig from which Polyphemus hung was very small, so she crawled on till she found a stronger twig. She climbed up onto it and hung from it. She then moved her long body up and down. She looked as though she were pumping. And so she was. She was pumping liquids from her body into the pads on her shoulders.
Her body began to get shorter and rounder. But the little pads that were to be her wings began to grow larger. You could see them grow if you watched closely. They grew broader and longer and thinner. At last they unfolded, and the beautiful colors began to show.
Now the wings were not thick pads at all. Anybody could see they were wings. They looked like a wrinkled bit of beautiful silk. But the moth pumped her body again and again. The wrinkles smoothed out. The wings grew bigger and bigger. In about an hour they were fully grown.
But Polyphemus still hung under the twig. Her wings were grown, but they were still soft. She could not fly with them yet. She must give them time to grow stiff. Sometimes she raised them. Then she spread them out. You could see pink and gray stripes and the beautiful blue eye-spot. At last they were strong enough for her to fly.
Night came. The stars shone out. Then there was a flutter of wings. But it was not our Polyphemus. It was another moth.
This moth, too, had brown wings with blue eye-spots. His body and wings were smaller than those of Polyphemus. But the feather-like feelers on his head were much larger.
It was dark in the tree where Polyphemus was. But the other moth seemed to know where to find her. He flew to the twig under which she hung, and fluttered about it. Polyphemus raised her beautiful wings softly, and softly dropped them again. It looked as though she were waving a welcome to him.
The visitor flew closer. Polyphemus
But before the night was over, both moths flew away. Night was their time for flying. The visitor flew high up over the trees, into the sweet, warm darkness. Polyhemus never saw him again. But she had no time to be lonely now. She had to begin laying eggs.
So Polyhemus herself did not fly very far. Soon she dropped down into an oak tree. She flew from leaf to leaf. Sometimes she put a cluster of round, flat eggs under a leaf. Sometimes she piled them on a twig.
The next night Polyhemus flew to an elm tree. She laid some eggs there too. She did nothing but lay eggs. She did not even eat. She could not eat. She had no mouth.
But Polyphemus had four beautiful wings. She could fly through the soft night air. And how she could lay eggs! She laid more than three hundred before she was done.
Then Polyphemus flew away forever. She did not need to stay with her eggs. They would hatch without her. She had put them where there were plenty of leaves. When her babies came out from the eggs, they would eat those leaves. They would grow big and beautiful like their father and mother.
But these babies would never see their mother, Polyphemus.
Nguồn: Wikisource English — By the Roadside (Dunn and Troxell)/Polyphemus. Văn bản được nhập và định dạng lại; CC BY-SA 4.0, có thể áp dụng điều khoản bổ sung của tác phẩm.