SPIDERS AND THEIR WEBS

“Spiders!” you say. “Ugh! what dreadful things. I don’t want to read about them.” But surely any one as big as you are need not be afraid of a poor little spider. Don’t you remember when “there came a big spider and sat down beside her” it waslittleMiss Moffat that was frightened away, and I don’t suppose she was much more than a baby.

You are quite a big boy or girl or you wouldn’t be able to read this, and spiders are really so clever and interesting that I believe you will enjoy hearing a little about them. Let us look at the picture of the spider in the web and pretend it is areal one; and shall we give it a name? I don’t believe Miss Moffat would have been frightened if she had known a little more about it, or if it had a name, so we will call this little spider “Emma.”

Emma is a girl spider and she will grow up ever so much bigger than any boy spider. It is rather topsy-turvy in the spider world, for the she-spiders are not only bigger but much stronger and fiercer than the little he-spiders, and they are quarrelsome, too, and love a fight. This need not make you think Emma is going to be savage with you; she would be much too afraid, for you are a big giant to her. It is only with other spiders and insects her own size she will fight.

When Emma was younger she was a light green color, but as she gets older she grows darker and darker and different markings come out on her back. As you grow, your clothes get too small for you and you have to have new ones or a tuck is let down. This is the same with Emma,only, as her coat happens to be her skin as well, it is no good thinking about a tuck. I don’t know how many new frocks you have, but Emma has changed hers seven times before she was grown up.

If you look closely at a real spider you will see it has hairs on its body and on its legs. Emma, too, has these same fine hairs which are very important. She can neither see nor hear very well, so these hairs, which are sensitive, can warn her of danger. They feel the least trembling of the web and are even conscious of sound, so you see how useful they are.

The spider is rather a lonely person and not at all sociable. Perhaps this is because she has to work so hard for a living. In fact, all her time, day and night, seems taken up either with making or repairing the web, and lying in wait, when she dozes far back in her little shelter out of sight, with one hand always on the tell-tale cord that connects with the web and lets her know of its slightest movement.

And now I am afraid you are finding this rather dry, and if I don’t tell you a story you will be frightened away like Miss Moffat.

A beautiful, regular pattern.

One day Emma felt very hungry; her larder was quite empty and she had been without food for nearly a week. It was a fine evening, with just a gentle little wind blowing, so she thought she would try a new place for her web, where it would have a better chance of catching something. She climbed up fairly high and then let herself drop with all her legs stretched out, spinning all the time the thread by which she was hanging. Then she climbed up it, spinning another thread, and when she had like this spun some nicestrong sticky threads she waited for the wind to carry them on to some branches of furze. When these held, Emma ran along them, fastened them firmly and spun a fresh thread each time till she made a line that was strong and elastic, and so not likely to break easily. When she was satisfied it would bear the weight of the web, she spun struts from it to hold it firm and then began the web itself. She first made a kind of outline and then spun and worked towards the middle. It was wonderful to see what a beautiful regular pattern she was spinning, with nothing but her instinct to guide her.

You know when a house is being built it has tall poles all round it called scaffolding, which helps the building; well, the first outline of the web was Emma’s scaffolding, and when it was no longer wanted she got rid of it by eating it up!

“But how did Emma spin a thread?” I can hear you asking.

It is like this—suppose you had a ballof silk in your pocket and ran about twisting it round trees to make a big net. This is really what the spider does, but the silk comes from inside her and will never come to an end like the ball in your pocket. It issues from what are called spinnerets. When she lets herself drop, the spinnerets regulate the thread, but when she is running along spinning she uses two of her back legs to pay it out, just as you would have to use your hands to pull the silk out of your pocket. It is a pity spiders usually spin their webs at night, so that we seldom get a chance of watching them.

I said just now that Emma’s silk never comes to an end, but sometimes if a very big fly or wasp gets caught in her net she has to use a great deal of her silk, which she winds round and round the fly, binding him hand and foot, and then her stock of thread which is carried inside her may run low; but it soon comes again, especially if she gets a good meal and a nice long rest.

A fly struggling in her web.

When Emma had finished she was pleased with the look of her web and hid herself at the side of it under a furze branch. She watched and waited. She waited all night long and nothing happened.

In the morning she was still watching and waiting, but at last there was a sound. A deep humming was heard in the air as if a fairy aeroplane were passing. It was so loud that even deaf Emma might have heard it if she had not been too busy. Just then, however, her hairs had received a wireless message to say there was a catch at the far end of her web. Although a spider is much more patient than you, and can sit still a long time, it is a quick mover when there is need for speed. Emma darted out like a flash of lightning and found a fly struggling in her web. It was a very small thin one, and poor hungry Emma was disappointed not to see a larger joint for herlarder. She quickly settled it, however, and spun some web round it to wrap it up, for, after all, it was something to eat and so worth taking care of. She was still busy with her parcel when “Buzz, buzz, buzz,” the whole web gave a big jump and there quite close to Emma was a huge, terrible beast. A great angry yellow wasp, making frightful growling noises and struggling desperately to get out of the web. Poor Emma wasn’t very old or daring and she knew the danger she was in, for this savage monster could kill her easily with his sting. He was fighting hard against the sticky meshes of the web and jerking himself nearer to her. She was too frightened to move, and for a minute she hung on to her web limp and motionless looking like a poor little dead spider. Then something happened. The wind blew a little puff, the wasp put out all his strength and gave a twist, the web already torn broke into a big hole and the great yellow beast was free. He glaredat Emma and hovered over her, buzzing furiously. He would have liked to kill her, but luckily he was too afraid of getting tangled up again in that sticky, clinging web, so, grumbling loudly, he flew away.

“What did Emma do?”

Well, she quickly got over her fright and I think she had a little lunch off her lean fly; then she looked at her web and was sorry to see it so torn and spoilt. The best thing to do was to mend it then and there, and as a spider always has more silk in her pocket, so to speak, she was able to do it at once. She repaired it so well that it didn’t look a bit as if it had been patched but just as if the new piece had always been there, the pattern was just as perfect.

I don’t believe you are feeling a bit afraid of spiders now, are you? There is no reason why we should fear them, for they don’t bite or sting us; and if they did the poison that paralyses and kills their prey would not hurt us. Besides, they kill the insects that harm us. I saw a spider’s web once full of mosquitoes, and you know what worrying little pests they are. I was glad to see so many caught, but sorry for the spider, as they didn’t look a very substantial meal. Then you know how dangerous flies have been found to be, making people ill by poisoning their food, so it is a good thing that spiders help us to get rid of them.

Another reason to like spiders is for their webs. There is no animal or insect that makes anything quite so wonderful and beautiful as what these little creatures spin.

The spider’s web is really a snare for catching her food. The strands of it are so fine as often to be invisible in some lights even in the daytime, and of course quite invisible at night. Sometimes the beetle or flying insect is so strong that he can tear the web and get free, but not often, for the spider can do wonders with her thread. She spins ropes and throws them at her big prey and doesn’t go near it till it is bound and helpless.

Of course, there are many different kinds of spiders who spin different kinds of webs. In a hotter country than this there is one that is as big or rather bigger than your hand, and another called the Tarantula whose bite is supposed to be so poisonous that it can kill people, but this is very exaggerated.

A Beautiful Web.

As the spider’s web is only her snare, she naturally has to have some kind of home, which must be quite near to her place of business. If you look very close and follow one of the strands of the web you will find some little dark cranny where the huntress can hide. If the web is amongst trees it will probably be a leaf she has pulled together with her thread and made into a dark little tunnel out of which she darts when something is caught.

Now before we leave the spiders’ webs you may wonder why you never see them so clearly as they show in the photographs, and I will tell you the reason. You see if the spiders’ nets which are set to catch sharp-eyed insects were always to show as clearly as they do in the pictures, I am afraid they would really starve, for no fly would be silly enough to go into such a bright trap. But sometimes in the autumn, very early in the morning, the dew hangs in tiny beads onthe webs, and makes them show up clearly, and then it is that the photographs are taken. If you get up early some still September morning, just about the same time as the sun, and go for a walk in a wood, or even along a country road, you may see the webs with what look like strings of the tiniest pearls on them, and you will find that until the sun has dried up all the little wet pearls, which are of course dewdrops, the poor spider has not a ghost of a chance of catching anything.

But to return to the spider herself. The one you know best is probably the house-spider. It has eight legs and a body rather the shape of a fat egg, with a little round bead of a head. It runs up the walls, sometimes hanging by a thread from the ceiling, and seems very fond of the corners of the room. How glad these house-spiders must be when they get to a dirty untidy house, where they will be safe from the broom. Most of us hate to see cobwebs in our houses, and get rid of them as quickly as we can.

I will tell you about a little house-spider who had a very exciting adventure. She had made a beautiful web in the corner of a bedroom, high up near the ceiling. One day her sensitive hairs told her there was some sort of disturbance in the room, and looking down from her web she saw all the furniture being moved out. The curtains and rugs had gone and the bed was pushed up into a corner. Then, to her dismay, a huge hairy monster came rushing up the wall. Of course, it was only a broom, but the poor little spider was so terrified she thought it was alive. It came nearer and nearer, and all at once there was a terrific rush and swish right up the wallwhere she lived, and web and spider disappeared. It was very alarming, but you will be glad to hear that the little spider was not killed but only stunned; and as soon as she came to her senses, she found herself right in the middle of the broom. She hung on and kept quite still, and soon the servants went into the kitchen to have some lunch and the broom was stood up against the wall.

Now was the little spider’s chance to escape, and out she popped. The coast seemed clear, so she scuttled up the wall and rested on the top of the door. Spiders haven’t good sight, so she couldn’t see much of the kitchen, but what she did see looked nice, and she thought it a much more interesting place than a bedroom, besides there were some flies about, so she determined to spin another web. No sooner had she begun when there was a crash like an earthquake. “Will horrors never cease?” thought the spider. It was really only the slamming of the door, but it so startled her that she fell and dropped on to the shoulder of some one who had just come in.

A Snare.

“Oh, Miss Molly!” cried cook, “you’ve got a spider on you, let me kill it.”

“No, no,” said Molly, “that would be unlucky, besides it’s only a tiny one,” and she took hold of the thread from which the spider hung and put it out of doors. Wasn’t that a lucky escape? She ran up the wall and got on to a window sill. Here she crouched down into a corner making herself as small as she could for fear of being seen, and then she fell asleep. You see she had gone through a great deal that morning, and the excitement had thoroughly tired her out.

When evening came she woke up and felt very hungry, so she quickly spun a web, and would you believe it, before it was even finished she felt a quiver, and there was a silly little gnat caught right in the middle. He was very tiny, but thespider wasn’t big, and he made a very good meal for her. She didn’t stop even to wrap him up, for she couldn’t wait, but gobbled him up on the spot.

Before a spider lays her eggs, she spins some web on the ground. She goes over it again and again, spinning all the time, till it looks like a piece of gauze. Into this she lays her eggs—often over a hundred—and covers them with more web and then wraps them up into a round ball. I don’t suppose you would think it, but a spider is a very devoted mother, and this white ball is so precious to her that she carries it everywhere she goes and never lets it out of her sight. She will hold it for hours in the sun to help to hatch the eggs, and she would fight anything that tried to hurt it or take it away from her.

It is the same when the eggs arehatched out, for her babies are always with her. Their home is on her back, and as there is such a swarm of them, they cover her right up and you often can’t see the spider for the young. Often some of them drop off, but they are active little things and they soon climb on again. As long as they live with their mother they have nothing to eat. This fasting, however, doesn’t seem to hurt them for they are very lively; the only thing is they don’t grow.

It doesn’t seem to matter very much even to grown-up spiders to go without their dinners for several days. And when they do at last get some food they gorge. They eat and eat and eat, and instead of making themselves ill like you would do, they seem to feel very comfortable and are able to go hungry again for some time. Perhaps it is because, as babies, they got used to doing without food.

Spiders love fine weather.

Spiders love fine weather, and they seem to know when to expect the sun to shine. When it is a bright day Mother Spider brings out her big little family. It is no good offering them any food, for they can’t eat it yet, so she finds a sheltered hot place and gives them a thorough sun bath, which they like better than anything else.

And now one more little story before we say “Good-by” to spiders. When Emma was a tiny baby she had thirty-nine brothers and sisters. And as she was just a tiny bit smaller than the others, she was very badly treated. The stronger ones would be very rough and cruel to her. They used to walk over her and push her near the edge where she would be likely to fall off. Two or three times they had crowded her so that she really had slipped off and lay sprawling on the ground. However, she was very nimble and agile, and she had always been able to pick herself up quickly and clamber up one of her mother’s legs on to her back again.

One day the little spiders were more spiteful than usual. “You are a disgrace to us,” they told Emma, “you might be a silly ant.”

“I’m no more an ant than you,” said Emma, “I can’t help being small.”

“Ant, ant, ant!” they cried, “ants belong on the ground and that’s your proper place,” and pushed her off on to the ground.

The unlucky part was that Emma’s mother didn’t know what had happened, and before Emma could struggle to her feet, she had hurried away having noticed a bird hovering near. There was Emma all alone, a poor lost little spider without a mother or a home.

She was feeling very sad and wondering what would become of her, when along came another Mother Spider with a lot of babies on her back. Two of these fell off quite near to Emma, and when they ran back to their mother she ran with them. Up an unknown leg sheclimbed and on to a strange back, and yet she felt quite as happy and at home as if it had been her own mother and the companions she joined had been her real brothers and sisters. How different spiders are from us! Emma’s mother never knew she had lost a baby, and the new mother didn’t bother herself at all that she had adopted one, and as for the strange brothers and sisters, they treated her rather better than her own, for they happened to be just a little smaller than Emma so were not strong enough to push her off. As far as Emma was concerned it was decidedly a change for the better, and she was really a very lucky little spider.

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