This is the story of a fight. In the first story of this book, I said
that Mary and I had seen a remarkable fight one evening at sundown on
the slopes of the bare brown foothills west of the campus. It was not
a battle of armies--we have seen that, too, in the little world we
watch,--but a combat of gladiators, a struggle between two champions
born and bred for fighting, and particularly for fighting each other.
One champion was Eurypelma, the great, black, hairy, eight-legged,
strong-fanged tarantula of California, and the other was Pepsis, a
mighty wasp in dull-blue mail, with rusty-red wings and a poisonous
javelin of a sting that might well frighten either you or me. Do you
have any wasp in your neighborhood of the ferocity and strength and
size of Pepsis? If not, you can hardly realize what a terrible
creature she is. With her strong hard-cased body an inch and a half
long, borne on powerful wings that expand fully three inches, and her
long and strong needle-pointed sting that darts in and out like a
flash and is always full of virulent poison, Pepsis is certainly queen
of all the wasp amazons. But if that is so, no less is Eurypelma
greatest, most dreadful, and fiercest, and hence king, of all the
spiders in this country. In South America and perhaps elsewhere in the
tropics, live the fierce bird-spiders with thick legs extending three
inches or more on each side of their ugly hairy bodies. Eurypelma, the
California tarantula, is not quite so large as that, nor does he
stalk, pounce on and kill little birds as his South American cousin is
said to do, but he is nevertheless a tremendous and fear-inspiring
creature among the small beasties of field and meadow.
But not all Eurypelmas are so ferocious; or at least are not ferocious
all the time. There are individual differences among them. Perhaps it
is a matter of age or health. Anyway, I had a pet tarantula which I
kept in an open jar in my room for several weeks, and I could handle
him with impunity. He would sit gently on my hand, or walk
deliberately up my arm, with his eight, fixed, shining, little reddish
eyes staring hard at me, and his long seven-jointed hairy legs
swinging gently and rhythmically along, without a sign of hesitation
or excitement. His hair was almost gray and perhaps this hoariness and
general sedateness betokened a ripe old age. But his great fangs were
unblunted, his supply of poison undiminished, and his skill in
striking and killing his prey still perfect, as often proved at his
feeding times. He is quite the largest Eurypelma I have ever seen. He
measures--for I still have his body, carefully stuffed, and fastened
on a block with legs all spread out--five inches from tip to tip of
opposite legs.
At the same time that I had this hoary old tarantula, I had another
smaller, coal-black fellow who went into a perfect ecstasy of anger
and ferocity every time any one came near him. He would stand on his
hind legs and paw wildly with fore legs and palpi, and lunge forward
fiercely at my inquisitive pencil. I found him originally in the
middle of an entry into a classroom, holding at bay an entire excited
class of art students armed with mahl-sticks and paint-brushes. The
students were mostly women, and I was hailed as deliverer and greatest
_dompteur_ of beasts when I scooped Eurypelma up in a bottle and
walked off with him.
But this is not telling of the sundown fight that Mary and I saw
together. We had been over to the sand-cut by the golf links, after
mining-bees, and were coming home with a fine lot of their holes and
some of the bees themselves, when Mary suddenly called to me to "see
the nice tarantula."
Perhaps nice isn't the best word for him, but he certainly was an
unusually imposing and fluffy-haired and fierce-looking brute of a
tarantula. He had rather an owly way about him, as if he had come out
from his hole too early and was dazed and half-blinded by the light.
Tarantulas are night prowlers; they do all their hunting after dark,
dig their holes and, indeed, carry on all the various businesses of
their life in the night-time. The occasional one found walking about
in daytime has made a mistake, someway, and he blunders around quite
like an owl in the sunshine.
All of a sudden, while Mary and I were smiling at this too early bird
of a tarantula, he went up on his hind legs in fighting attitude, and
at the same instant down darted a great tarantula hawk, that is, a
Pepsis wasp. Her armored body glinted cool and metallic in the red
sunset light, and her great wings had a suggestive shining of dull
fire about them. She checked her swoop just before reaching Eurypelma,
and made a quick dart over him, and then a quick turn back, intending
to catch the tarantula in the rear. But lethargic and owly as
Eurypelma had been a moment before, he was now all alertness and
agility. He had to be. He was defending his life. One full fair stab
of the poisoned javelin, sheathed but ready at the tip of the
flexible, blue-black body hovering over him, and it would be over with
Eurypelma. And he knew it. Or perhaps he didn't. But he acted as if he
did. He was going to do his best not to be stabbed; that was sure. And
Pepsis was going to do her best to stab; that also was quickly
certain.
At the same time Pepsis knew--or anyway acted as if she did--that to
be struck by one or both of those terrible vertical, poison-filled
fangs was sure death. It would be like a blow from a battle-axe, with
the added horror of mortal poison poured into the wound.
So Eurypelma about-faced like a flash, and Pepsis was foiled in her
strategy. She flew up and a yard away, then returned to the attack.
She flew about in swift circles over his head, preparatory to darting
in again. But Eurypelma was ready. As she swooped viciously down, he
lunged up and forward with a half-leap, half-forward fall, and came
within an ace of striking the trailing blue-black abdomen with his
reaching fangs. Indeed it seemed to Mary and me as if they really
grazed the metallic body. But evidently they had not pierced the
smooth armor. Nor had Pepsis in that breathless moment of close
quarters been able to plant her lance. She whirled up, high this time
but immediately back, although a little more wary evidently, for she
checked her downward plunge three or four inches from the dancing
champion on the ground. And so for wild minute after minute it went
on; Eurypelma always up and tip-toeing on those strong hind legs, with
open, armed mouth always toward the point of attack, and Pepsis ever
darting down, up, over, across, and in and out in dizzy dashes, but
never quite closing.
Were Mary and I excited? Not a word could we utter; only now and then
a swift intake of breath; a stifled "O" or "Ah" or "See." And then of
a sudden came the end. Pepsis saw her chance. A lightning swoop
carried her right on to the hairy champion. The quivering lance shot
home. The poison coursed into the great soft body. But at the same
moment the terrible fangs struck fair on the blue armor and crashed
through it. Two awful wounds, and the wings of dull fire beat
violently only to strike up a little cloud of dust and whirl the
mangled body around and around. Fortunately Death was merciful, and
the brave amazon made a quick end.
But what of Eurypelma, the killer? Was it well with him? The
sting-made wound itself was of little moment; it closed as soon as the
lancet withdrew. But not before the delicate poison sac at its base
inside the wasp-body had contracted and squirted down the slender
hollow of the sting a drop of liquid fire. And so it was not well with
Eurypelma in his insides. Victor he seemed to be, but if he could
think, he must have had grave doubts about the joys of victory.
For a curious drowsiness was coming over him. Perhaps, disquieting
thought, it was the approaching stupor of the poison's working. His
strong long legs became limp, they would not work regularly, they
could not hold his heavy hairy body up from the ground. He would get
into his hole and rest. But it was too late. And after a few uneven
steps, victor Eurypelma settled heavily down beside his amazon
victim, inert and forevermore beyond fighting. He was paralyzed.
And so Mary and I brought him home in our collecting box, together
with the torn body of Pepsis with her wings of slow fire dulled by the
dust of her last struggles. And though it is a whole month now since
Eurypelma received his stab from the poisoned javelin of Pepsis, he
has not recovered; nor will he ever. When you touch him, he draws up
slowly one leg after another, or moves a palpus feebly. But it is
living death; a hopeless paralytic is the king.
Dear reader, you are of course as bright as Mary, and so you have
noticed, as she did right away, the close parallel between what
happened to Eurypelma and what happened to the measuring-worms brought
by Ammophila to her nest burrow as described in the first story in
this book. And so, like Mary, you realize that the vendetta or life
feud between the tarantula family and the family of Pepsis, the
tarantula hawk, is based on reasons of domestic economy rather than on
those of sentiment, which determine vendettas in Corsica and feuds in
Kentucky.
To be quite plain, Pepsis fights Eurypelma to get his huge, juicy body
for food for her young; and Eurypelma fights Pepsis to keep from
becoming paralyzed provender. If Pepsis had escaped unhurt in the
combat at which Mary and I "assisted," as the French say, as
enthralled spectators, we should have seen her drag by mighty effort
the limp, paralyzed, spider giant to her nest hole not far distant--a
great hole twelve inches deep and with a side chamber at the bottom.
There she would have thrust him down the throat of the burrow, and
then crawled in and laid an egg on the helpless beast, from which in
time would have hatched the carnivorous wasp grub. Pepsis has many
close allies among the wasps, all black or steely blue with smoky or
dull-bronze wings, and they all use spiders, stung and paralyzed, to
store their nest holes with.
"Do the little black and blue wasps hunt the little spiders and the
larger ones the big spiders?" asks Mary.
"Exactly," I respond, "and the giant wasp of them all, Pepsis, the
queen of the wasp amazons, hunts only the biggest spider of them all,
Eurypelma, the tarantula king, and we have seen her do it."
"Well," says Mary, "even if she wants him for her children to eat,
it's a real vendetta, isn't it?"
"Indeed it is," I answer, "it's more real, and fiercer, and more
relentless, and more persistent than any human vendetta that ever was.
For every Pepsis mother in the world is always hunting for Eurypelmas
to fight. And not _all_ Corsicans have a vendetta on hand, nor all
Kentuckians a feud."
[Illustration: THE TRUE STORY OF THE PIT OF MORROWBIE JUKES]