THE DADDY-LONG-LEGS OR HARVESTMAN
(Leiobunum grande, Weed)
Who has not watched daddy-long-legs stalk majestically across the floor or up the wall, one long slender leg waving in front of him like the arm of some gesticulating prophet of old? Indeed, the fly or mosquito is hardly more familiar.
Long-leggedness is all relative to size of body, and viewed from this standpoint everyone must agree that the harvestman is the longest-legged creature in the world. If its body were the size of a flamingo its legs would cover over thirty feet of ground. As it has eight legs and each leg is eight times the length of its body it has sixty-four times as much length of leg as of body.
It is a strange, spider creature having only two eyes which look to right and left from a turret-like hump in the middle of its back. Its claws in front have pincers like a crab’s. Opposite the first pair of legs are scent glands from which it pours out a fluid which has so bad an odor that it seems to protect it from its foes.
Swung low between its legs, this creature of twilight and shade wanders in search of small insects which it catches and devours as other spiders do. It only lives one season in the North and spins no web and makes no nest. The female lays her eggs deep down in the ground or under stones or in the crevices of the bark of trees.