RUTH AND THE WONDERFUL SPINNERS
She throws a web upon the air and soon
’Tis caught and lifted by the willing breezes,
Then, freed from trouble in her light balloon,
Our spinner travels wheresoe’re she pleases.
—_Edith M. Thomas._
Ruth was in the garden counting colours among the hollyhocks when a
little breeze hurried by.
“Come,” it said, kissing her cheek, “and hurry; things are going to
happen.”
“It is my dear Wind,” cried Ruth, her eyes growing big with expectation,
and, stopping just long enough to snatch up Belinda, who of course would
wish to go, too, she followed where the little breeze led.
This was to a lovely spot on the edge of the wood, and one of the first
things she saw was a big round spider’s web on the branches of a tall
bush.
“Oh,” she said, going up closer, “who would ever think a spider could
make anything like that?”
“Indeed,” said a voice which made her give a little jump, “who else but
a spider could spin a web, I’d like to know? You haven’t any brains, I’m
thinking.”
“Oh, please excuse me,” said Ruth. “I didn’t know you were there.”
“That’s because you don’t use your eyes properly,” was the answer of the
large, handsome black and gold spider hanging head down from the centre
of the big web.
Her eight long, slender legs were outstretched and rested by their tips
on the bases of the taut radii, and her eight eyes were staring at Ruth.
“I saw you as soon as you came,” she said.
“I suppose you will stay to the meeting. I’m to be chair-spider.”
“Chair-spider?” repeated Ruth, slightly confused by those eight bright
eyes. “And please, what meeting?”
“Why, our meeting, of course. Mrs. Cobweb Weaver says men always have a
chairman at their meetings, so why shouldn’t spiders have a
chair-spider, I’d like to know?”
“I suppose they should,” agreed Ruth.
“Of course we should. Considering you are a human creature, with only
two eyes, two legs, and no spinnerets, you really show a great deal of
sense. Now sit down on the crotch of that little tree, then you will be
near me and can hear all I say. What’s that thing you are carrying?”
“Why, it’s Belinda, my doll,” explained Ruth. “I tell her everything. I
think she will like your—your—meeting.”
“Well, I don’t care whether she does or not,” said Madame Spider. “Now
our friends are arriving, and as you can see, with even two eyes, they
are all shapes and sizes. Long legged, short legged, plump, thin, grave
and gay. All colours too—quite enough to satisfy any taste, I should
say.”
Ruth looked about her in wide-eyed astonishment.
“I never knew there were so many kinds of spiders,” she said at last,
“or that they had such lovely colours. I thought spiders were mostly
grayish or brownish.”
“That is because you haven’t used your eyes, as I said before; but you
are only like others of your kind. Such ignorance! Because some spiders
are dull and colourless, most people imagine that all are so. I suppose
they think, if they stop to think at all, that all kinds of webs are
spun by the same kind of spider, and that all spiders spin webs.”
“Don’t they?” asked Ruth, with some hesitation, for Mrs. Spider’s
indignation made her look quite fierce.
“They do _not_,” was the decided answer. “All spiders are spinners, but
not all are web makers.”
Ruth looked puzzled.
“You see,” explained Mrs. Spider, “it all depends upon the way they
catch their prey. Spider habits are as different as their looks. Some
like the sun, others prefer the shade. Some live in the forest, and
others with the house people. Many make their home in the bark of trees,
and under stones.”
“I’ve seen that kind,” interrupted Ruth, eagerly, “and when you lift up
the stone they run awfully fast. Sometimes they have a funny little gray
bundle, just as the ants carry their babies. Maybe it’s their babies
too. Is it?”
“Well, they will be babies if nothing happens. Those gray bundles are
cocoons full of eggs. The mother spins the cocoon of silk from her own
body.”
“Oh, now, I understand. They are spinners, but they don’t have any web.
Isn’t that it?”
“Exactly. They do not need a web. They spring on their prey when the
prey isn’t looking. We call them hunters, also runners.”
“Well, they _can_ run,” said Ruth.
[Illustration: “‘THE MOTHER SPINS THE COCOON OF SILK FROM HER OWN
BODY’”]
“The flower spiders are not web spinners either,” went on Madame Spider,
who seemed to like nothing better than to talk. “They live among
flowers, and eat the visiting insects. You can see some of them over
there. Talk about colours! They are gay enough, just like flowers
themselves. Perhaps you can guess why.”
Ruth thought a few minutes.
“Well,” she said, “if they were the same colour as the flower they
couldn’t be seen so easily. I saw something walk out of an ear of corn
once, and it looked like a kernel of corn on eight legs. It was awful
funny. Was that a spider?”
“Very likely. We are wonderful enough for anything. I suppose you have
never heard of the trapdoor spider and his silk-lined burrow, with its
little hinged door, nor of the spider who lives under the water, in a
tiny silken house, which she spins herself, and fills with air carried
down, bubble by bubble, from the surface. Don’t look as though you
didn’t believe me. It isn’t polite. I am telling you the truth. Very
likely you’ll doubt me when I say that we sail in balloons, of our own
making, and cross streams of water on bridges, which we can fashion as
we need them—that is, we orb weavers do, for, after all, we stand at the
head of the spider clan. Did you know I was an orb weaver?”
“I—I—haven’t thought about it,” said Ruth, slowly, for the question had
come very suddenly, “but I’d like you to go on telling me things. Do you
always hang with your head down? I should think it would make you
dizzy.”
“Dizzy? Whoever heard of such a thing? Of course I keep my head down,
and my toes on my telegraph lines. Then I can feel the least tremble in
any one of them, and I’m pretty quick to run where I know my dinner is
waiting. Sometimes I don’t hurry quite so fast. That is when the line
trembles in a way which lets me know that something big has been caught.
Indeed, there are times when I bite the threads around what might have
been my dinner, and let it go; for it is wiser to lose a meal than run
the chance of being a meal.” And Mrs. Orb Weaver winked, not with one
eye only, but with all eight. “Now it is time to talk to the company,”
she added, “as I am chair-spider.”
She said the last words in a loud voice, intended for all to hear; then
she looked around to see if any one objected.
“They had better not,” she said to Ruth, and in a louder voice, added:
“My friends, we are not appreciated. Men talk about the wonderful bees,
the wonderful wasps, the wonderful ants, but few of them say anything
about the wonderful spiders. Now we are wonderful, too, and we are
honest, and we are industrious. We eat flies and lots of other pests,
and we do not hurt orchards, or steal into pantries, or chew up clothes.
Indeed, we do man no harm at all. But is he grateful? Tell me that. I’ll
tell you he isn’t. Ask Mrs. Cobweb Weaver if there isn’t always some
broom sweeping down the nice web she makes. I wonder she doesn’t hate a
broom. No, my friends, man is not grateful. Even those who call
themselves our friends are ready to pop us into bottles, or boxes,
whenever they get a chance. They give us what they call a painless death
in the cause of science. Now we would rather live in our own cause. At
least I would.”
Mrs. Orb Weaver had become so excited that her whole web was shaking
violently.
Ruth was excited, too.
“It’s rather horrid to do that way,” she said, “but maybe people don’t
know about you. I didn’t until to-day. The wonderful things I mean, and
I want to know lots more. How your web is made and—and—everything.
Please tell me.”
“Why, certainly,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver readily. “To begin with, my
web is made of silk.”
“Who didn’t know that?” snapped a running spider.
“I didn’t,” answered Ruth.
“You! And who are you, pray?”
“Be quiet,” commanded Mrs. Orb Weaver. “She is my guest, and anything
she wishes to know I shall be happy to tell her. Now, to get on, our
webs are made of silk, and the silk comes from our own bodies, through
little tubes called spinnerets. It is soft at first, but gets harder
when it reaches the air, just like caterpillar silk. We guide each
thread with our hind feet, making heavier strands by twisting a number
of fine ones together. Of course, we spin the foundation lines first.
They are the ones which fix the web to the bush. Then the ray lines,
those like the spokes in a wheel. They are all heavy strands, and only
after they are finished do we spin the real snare, the lines which run
around. They are very fine, and are covered with a sort of glue, for
they have to catch and hold the flies and other insects that come on the
web. We orb weavers are the only ones who have this glue. No other
spiders use it. They trust to the meshes of the web to entangle their
prey.”
“But why don’t the sticky parts catch you too?” asked Ruth, who had been
listening with eager attention. “I’ve seen you run all over your web
and——”
“We never get caught. Of course not,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver. “And
why? That’s a question. The wise men don’t know, and if we do, we are
not telling. Now I am getting hungry, so I think I will tell a little
story, then we will adjourn. I am sorry there isn’t time for Mrs. Funnel
Weaver to speak.”
“But there is,” declared a large brown spider, whose body looked as
though it were set on a framework of legs. “I mean to speak too—if only
to point out all those webs in the grass.”
“Oh, I’ve often seen webs like that,” said Ruth. “They are lovely with
dew on them. But why do you call yourself a funnel weaver?”
“I don’t!” she snapped. “The men, who think they know everything, gave
me that name, because at one side of my web is a funnel-shaped tube. It
is our way to escape our enemies. We run through it into the grass when
something too big for us to manage gets into our web.”
“I generally make my web in houses,” said a small, slender-legged,
light-coloured spider.
She spoke in a hurry, as though she was afraid some one might stop her
before she finished. “I have cousins who like fields and fences and
outbuildings, but our webs are all the same pattern. Not so regular as
yours, Mrs. Orb Weaver, but very fine and delicate.”
“Oh, everybody knows you, Mrs. Cobweb Weaver,” said a voice from a
nearby twig. “Now if you are speaking of legs——”
“We are not,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and I should like to know how
you came here.”
“On my legs of course. Don’t you think they are long enough? And though
I can neither spin nor weave, I am your relation, and I have as much
right to be here as you have. I——”
“Why, it’s Daddy Long Legs,” interrupted Ruth, with a friendly smile of
recognition. “I like daddies.”
“Well, I am not saying anything about my legs,” remarked a fat little
spider, as Daddy tried to bow to Ruth, “though I have eight of them. I
usually travel in a balloon, which I make myself. Oh, I tell you, it is
fine to go
“Sailing mid the golden air
In skiffs of yielding gossamer.”
[Illustration: “‘WHY, IT’S DADDY LONG LEGS’”]
“Poetry,” said a handsome spider, wheeling back and forth on a silken
bridge swung between two bushes. “I could have learned some too, but I
didn’t know it was allowed. Of course I can build bridges. Who is asking
that idiotic question? You?” And eight glaring eyes were fixed upon
Ruth. “Maybe you don’t know that spiders were the first bridge builders
and when men suspend their great bridges to-day they follow our ideas
and ways, without giving us the least credit; but that’s the way with
men.”
“Well, we can’t expect to regulate men,” answered Mrs. Orb Weaver, “and,
besides, it’s time to tell my story, and then you will know why we get
our name, and why we are such wonderful spinners. Now listen, all of
you:
“Once upon a time——”
Ruth chuckled contentedly. All nice stories began, “Once upon a time.”
“Please go on,” she whispered eagerly.
“Then don’t interrupt me,” said Mrs. Orb Weaver, and she began again:
“Once upon a time, ever so long ago, there lived in a beautiful land
called Greece a maiden named Arachne. Arachne was not only fair to look
upon, but she could also spin and weave in a fashion so wondrously fine
that all who saw her work said that the great Athena herself must have
been her teacher. Now this surely was praise enough, but Arachne was
vain. ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘no one has taught me, and gladly will I weave
with the great goddess herself, and thus prove the skill to be all my
own.’ Her words only shocked all who heard them, but Arachne cared not,
and again repeated her wish to try her skill with Athena.
“So it happened that as she sat spinning one day an old woman, leaning
on a staff, stopped by her loom.
“‘Child,’ she said in a gentle voice, ‘a great gift is yours.’
“Arachne tossed her head, and answered scornfully:
“‘Well do I know it, yet Athena dares not try her skill with mine.’
“‘Dares not?’ repeated the old dame, in tones that should have made
Arachne tremble. ‘Dares not, say you? Foolish maiden, be warned in
time.’
“But Arachne was too proud to yield, and she still persisted, even
though the old dame had dropped her mantle, and stood revealed as the
great goddess herself.
“‘Be it so,’ said Athena, sternly, and both began to weave.
“For hours their shuttles flew in and out. Arachne’s work was wonderful,
but for her theme she had chosen the weakness and the failure of the
gods. Athena pictured forth their greatness. The sky was her loom, and
from the rainbow she chose her colours, and when her work was finished
and its splendours spanned the heavens, Arachne realized that she had
failed.
“Ashamed and miserable, she sought to hang herself in the meshes of her
web.
“‘Nay, rash maid,’ spoke Athena; ‘thou shalt not die, but live to be the
mother of a great race, the most wonderful spinners on earth.’
“Even as Athena spoke, Arachne grew smaller and smaller, until not a
maiden, but a spider, hung from that marvellous web.
“And now, my friends,” finished Mrs. Orb Weaver, “need I tell you that
we are the wonderful race of which Athena spoke, and need _I_ add that
we have inherited Arachne’s marvellous skill, and are truly the most
wonderful spinners on earth? Now I am hungry and the meeting is
adjourned.”
“So am I,” added Daddy Long Legs, “not adjourned, but hungry, and, by
the way, do you imagine any one believes that old story?”
He winked at Ruth, and then moved away as fast as his long legs would
carry him.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]