When Dillard arrives home from the quarry, she consults an insect book to learn if mosquitoes will feed on snakes. The book confirms that mosquitoes will bite snakes. As Dillard is thinking about parasites, she remembers having seen a boy carrying a snapping turtle near the creek the week before. When Dillard stops to talk to the boy, he points to a couple of leeches attached to the turtle. The boy wants to know if the leeches will kill the turtle. Dillard tells the boy that the turtle will live. Dillard thinks of a number of times she has noticed, or heard stories about, animals in the wild dying of parasite attacks. It seems to be the way of things, thinks Dillard.
Dillard once received a book on insect pests as a.....
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