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 the spider 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.
CHAPTER VI
BABY SPIDERS
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 are hatched 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.