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.
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.