Debbie Myers, age 11, of Spokane, Wash  , her question:

The strange story of the jumping bean begins in the warm, scrubby regions of Central and South America, The chief characters in the story are the children of a shy little moth plus a hardy little shrub related to the showy poinsettia, This moth family succeeds against hazards and hardships ‑ only to make things worse for the shrub 

Many of us know the gypsy moth as a pest among our orchards and garden trees, The damage is done by the whiskery caterpillars who hide by day and do their ravenous feeding by night  These pests were unleashed in America in 1868, when a number of them were brought from Europe to New England for scientific experiments ‑ and some escaped, We have been trying to round up and destroy their destructive descendants ever since  One of our allies in this insect war is a crisp‑coated beetle who devours the caterpillars 

Our pesky gypsy moth has a host of cousins in many parts of the world  One cousin has the fancy name of Carpocap saealtitans, She has a furry body and pale, mothy wings  Her home is in the hot, semi‑desert regions of Central and South America  Here her children are not threatened by chemical sprays and insecticides that men use to protect their cultivated trees, But they are threatened by beetles who dine on caterpillar meat 

Also living in the semi‑desert regions is the small# hardy shrub  It is a humble member of the spurge plant family, cousin to the plants that give us rubber and castor oil  The small flowers of these plants are riot very noticeable but some, like the poinsettia, have gaudy‑colored leaf bracts which look like flowers 

When the spurge shrub shows its modest flowers, the mother gypsy moth lays her eggs, one in each blossoms The flower fades and a budding boars forms around the little moth egg, When the egg hatches, it is inside a bean which serves it as a house and a pantry  It also protects the young gypsy caterpillar from its enemies, the hungry beetles 

The caterpillar eats away at the soft inside of the growing bean, The crusty outside of the three‑sided little bean is left to form the walls of the caterpillarts house, The more food he eats, the more roam he has, and the bigger he grows, the mare room he needs  This works out very well for the caterpillar ‑ but the heart of the bean is all eaten away and it becomes useless as a seed for a new spurge shrub,

No matter how much"he eats, the caterpillar inside the bean is always vary short of room  And, like everyone else, he needs to exercise, This he does with bends and perks  He bends around in a curve and straightens out with a sudden jerk, These setting‑up exercises make the bean dump as if it has a spring inside it ‑• which indeed it has 

If all goes well, the caterpillar will at last become a sleeping pupa  It will wake up as a winged moth, break out of its old bean house and fly off into the air looking rather like a drab little clothes moth,