THE BANDED SPIDER
In the disagreeable season of the year, when the insect has nothing to
do and retires to winter quarters, an observer who looks in the sunny
nooks, grubs in the sand, lifts the stones, or searches the brushwood,
will often find something very interesting, a real work of art. Happy
are they who can appreciate such treasures! I wish them all the joys
they have brought me and will continue to bring me, in spite of the
vexations of life, which grow ever more bitter as the years follow
their swift downward course.
Should the seekers rummage among the wild grasses in the willow-beds
and thickets, I wish them the delight of finding the wonderful object
that, at this moment, lies before my eyes. It is the work of a Spider,
the nest of the Banded Spider.
In bearing and coloring, this Spider is among the handsomest that I
know. On her fat body, nearly as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate
yellow, black, and silver sashes, to which she owes her name of Banded.
Her eight long legs, with their dark-brown and pale-brown rings,
surround her body like the spokes of a wheel.
Any small prey suits her; and, as long as she can find supports for her
web, she settles wherever the Locust hops, wherever the Fly hovers,
wherever the Dragon-fly dances or the Butterfly flits. Usually, because
of the greater abundance of game there, she spreads her web across
some brooklet, from bank to bank, among the rushes. She also stretches
it sometimes in the thickets of evergreen oak, on the slopes with the
scrubby grass, dear to Grasshoppers.
Her hunting-weapon is a large upright web, whose outer boundary is
fastened to the neighboring branches by a number of moorings. Her
web is like that of the other weaving Spiders. Straight threads
run out like spokes of a wheel from a central point. Over these
runs a continuous spiral thread, forming chords, or cross-bars,
from the center to the circumference. It is magnificently large and
magnificently symmetrical.
In the lower part of the web, starting from the center, a thick wide
ribbon descends zigzag-wise across the spokes. This is the Spider’s
trademark, the way she signs her work of art. Also, the strong silk
zigzag gives greater firmness to the web.
The net needs to be firm to hold the heavy insects that light on it.
The Spider cannot pick and choose her prizes. Seated motionless in the
center of the web, her eight legs widespread to feel the shaking of
the network in any direction, she waits for what luck will bring her:
sometimes some giddy weak thing unable to control its flight, sometimes
some powerful prey rushing headlong with a reckless bound.
[Illustration]
The Locust in particular, the fiery Locust, who releases the spring of
his long shanks at random, often falls into the trap. One imagines that
his strength ought to frighten the Spider; the kick of his spurred legs
should enable him to make a hole then and there in the web and to get
away. But not at all. If he does not free himself at the first effort,
the Locust is lost.
Turning her back on the game, the Banded Spider works all her
spinnerets—the spinneret is the organ with which she makes her silk,
and is pierced with tiny holes like the mouth of a watering-pot—at one
and the same time. She gathers the silky spray with her hind-legs,
which are longer than the others and open wide apart to allow the
silk to spread. In this way the Spider obtains not a thread but a
rainbow-colored sheet, a sort of clouded fan wherein the threads are
kept almost separate. Her two hind-legs fling this sheet, or shroud, by
rapid alternate armfuls, while, at the same time, they turn the Locust
over and over, swathing it completely.
The gladiator of old times, when forced to fight against powerful
wild beasts, appeared in the ring with a rope-net folded over his
left shoulder. The animal made its spring. The man, with a sudden
movement of his right arm, cast the net as a fisherman does; he covered
the beast and tangled it in the meshes. A thrust of the trident, or
three-pronged spear, gave the finishing touch to the vanquished foe.
The Spider works in the same way, with this advantage, that she can
renew her armful of fetters. If the first is not enough, a second
instantly follows, and another and yet another until she has used up
all her silk.
When all movement ceases under the snowy winding-sheet, the Spider goes
up to her bound prisoner. She has a better weapon than the gladiator’s
three-pronged spear: she has her poison-fangs. She gnaws at the Locust.
When she has finished, she flings the clean-bled remains out of the net
and returns to her waiting-place in the centre of the web.
[Illustration]
THE NEST
The Spiders show their great talents even better in the business of
motherhood than in their hunting. The silk bag, the nest, in which
the Banded Spider houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the
bird’s nest. In shape it is a balloon turned upside down, nearly the
size of a pigeon’s egg. The top tapers like a pear and is cut short and
crowned with a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened by
means of moorings that fasten the nest to the near-by twigs. The whole,
a graceful egg-shaped object, hangs straight down among a few threads
that steady it.
The top of the Spider’s nest is hollowed into a bowl closed with a
silky padding. Covering all the rest of the nest is a wrapper of thick,
compact white satin, adorned with ribbons and patterns of brown and
even black silk. We know at once the use of this satin wrapper; it is a
waterproof cover which neither dew nor rain can penetrate.
The Spider’s nest, down among the dead grasses, close to the ground,
must protect its contents from the winter cold. Let us cut the wrapper
with our scissors. Underneath, we find a thick layer of reddish-brown
silk, not worked into a fabric this time, but puffed into an extra-fine
wadding. This is a comforter, a quilt, for the Spider’s babies, softer
than any swan’s down and warm as toast.
In the middle of this quilt hangs a cylindrical pocket, round at the
bottom, cut square at the top and closed with a padded lid. It is made
of extremely fine satin; it holds the Spider’s eggs, pretty little
orange-colored beads, which, glued together, form a little globe the
size of a pea. These are the treasures which must be guarded against
the weather.
When the Spider is making her pouch she moves slowly round and round,
paying out a single thread. The hind-legs draw it out and place it
in position on that which is already done. Thus is formed the satin
bag. Guy-ropes bind it to the nearest threads and keep it stretched,
especially at the mouth. The bag is just large enough to hold all the
eggs, without any room left over.
When the Spider has laid her eggs, she begins to work her spinneret
once more, but in a different manner. Her body sinks and touches a
point, goes back, sinks again and touches another point, first here,
then there, making confused zigzags. At the same time, the hind-legs
tread the material given out. The result is not a woven cloth, but a
sort of felt, a blanketing.
To make the eider-down quilt, she turns out reddish-brown silk, finer
than the other and coming out in clouds which she beats into a sort of
froth with her hind-legs. The egg-pocket disappears, drowned in this
exquisite wadding.
[Illustration]
Again she changes her material, making the white silk of the outer
wrapper. Already the bag has taken its balloon shape, tapering towards
the neck. She now decorates the nest with brown markings, making for
this purpose still a different kind of silk, varying in color from
russet to black. When this is done, the work is finished.
What a wonderful silk-factory the Spider runs! With a very simple
and never-varying plant, consisting of her own hind-legs and
spinnerets, she produces, by turns, rope-maker’s, spinner’s, weaver’s,
ribbon-maker’s and felt-maker’s work. How does she do it? How can she
obtain, as she wishes, skeins of different colors and grades? How
does she turn them out, first in this fashion, then in that? I see
the results, but I do not understand the machinery and still less the
process. It beats me altogether.
When the Spider has finished her nest, she moves away with slow
strides, without giving a glance at the bag. The rest does not interest
her: time and the sun will hatch the eggs. By weaving the house for
her children she has used up all her silk. If she returned to her web
now, she would not have any with which to bind her prey. Besides, she
no longer has any appetite. Withered and languid, she drags out her
existence for a few days and, at last, dies. This is how things happen
when I keep the Spiders in my cages; this is how they must happen in
the brushwood.
THE BANDED SPIDER’S FAMILY
The pretty orange-yellow eggs of the Banded Spider number above five
hundred. They are inclosed, you will remember, in a white-satin nest,
in which there is no opening of any kind. How will the little Spiders
get out, when their time comes and their mother is not there to help
them?
The animal and vegetable kingdoms are sometimes very much alike. The
Spider’s nest seems to me like an animal fruit, which holds eggs
instead of seeds. Now seeds have all sorts of ways of scattering. The
fruit of the garden balsam, when ripe, splits, at the least touch,
into five fleshy valves, which curl up and shoot their seeds to a
distance. You all know the jewel-weeds, or touch-me-nots, along the
wayside, whose seed pods explode when you touch them. Then there are
light seeds, like the dandelion, which have tufts or plumes to carry
them away. The “keys” of the elm are formed of a broad, light fan with
the seed cased in the center; those of the maple are joined in pairs
and are like the unfurled wings of a bird; those of the ash, carved
like the blade of an oar, perform the most distant journeys when driven
before the storm. Like the plant, the insect also sometimes has ways of
shooting its large families out into the world. You will notice this in
the case of many Spiders, and particularly this Banded Spider.
As March comes on the Spiders begin to hatch out inside the nest. If
we cut it open with the scissors we shall find some scattered over
the eider-down outside the center room, and some still in the orange
eggs. The little Spiders have not got their beautiful banded dresses
yet; they are pale yellow on top, with black-rimmed eyes, and white
and brown underneath. They stay in the outer room of the nest for four
months, during which time their bodies harden and they grow mature.
When June and July come, they are anxious to be off, but they cannot
make a hole in the tough fabric of the nest. Never mind, the nest will
open of itself, like a ripe seed-pod. Some day, when the sun is very
hot, the satin bursts. Some of the Spiderlings, all mixed up with
their flossy mattress, shoot out of the balloon. They are in frantic
commotion. Others stay inside the nest and come out in their own good
time. But as they come out, all of them climb up the near-by twigs and
send out little threads which float, break, and fly away, carrying the
tiny Spiders with them. You shall hear more about these flying machines
of the young Spiders in the next chapters.
[Illustration]