What is there Inside the Jumping Bean?
Jumping beans come from Mexico and Central America. It is not the bean that jumps, but a little caterpillar inside. A tree which grows in swamps has curious three- cornered fruit divided into three parts, like little pods. In two of these pods are small black seeds the third part often contains a tiny caterpillar and is what we call the jumping bean. Before the tree can have its fruit it must, of course, bear flowers. A gray moth visits those flowers, and in part of each deposits an egg. The part which contains the egg grows with the rest of the flower, but, instead of becoming a pod for the seed of the tree, it turns into a home for the larva, or caterpillar, which is coming from the egg. Later the flowers lose their petals and seed-pods form and ripen. In August the seed is ripe. The husk containing the pods of seed and the little pod with the caterpillar inside drops to the ground and splits into three parts.
The caterpillar eats most of the inside of its house when it travels it coils itself up, then lets itself go like a catapult. carrying the house with it; or it rolls over and over. When the time comes for it to spin a coccoon and go to sleep, it does so. But first it cuts a door in the house, fastening it with silken threads. When its sleep is ended, and the caterpillar has turned into a moth, it cuts the threads that hold the door and crawls out of the bean-pod.
