“You spin a great deal, I suppose?” asked Zoo.
“O, yes!” said Luxz; “I am as busy as can be. I can spin little fine threads, and coarser ones, and dance and swing all around on them. But of course the most of my time is occupied with work. It is a good deal of work to make a web, although you might not think so. There were some boys coming past here to school as I had just finished a nice web, quite a while ago, and they knocked it all down. I built another, then another, but every time those wicked creatures would destroy it, and then laugh at my dismay. Finally my pockets were as empty as could be, and I was all out of silk, so I had to go and kill another spider, and occupy her web for a time. But this I built myself.”
“Yes, indeed. They are not very sagacious animals, though sometimes I will find one that I can’t entice into my web after the greatest endeavors. We are all very cunning, but we have to look out for some of the birds. A neighbor of mine was swinging one morning, as fine as could be, and a swallow came along, that had his nest up under the eaves, and—well, that was the last of her. The wasps, as I have already mentioned, are very bad. If one of them gets caught in our webs, we unfasten the threads as quickly as we can, and let her go, fearing that if we don’t, we shall get the worst of it.
“Our threads are very convenient,” Luxz continued, after a moment’s pause, “for we can let one end of them float out, and they stick to anything they touch, making a thoroughfare for us. I remember once those same boys put me on a chip in a large tub of water, and again laughed at my discomfiture. But I was equal to the emergency, and had soon spun out a thread the outer end of which a draught of air floated to the side of the tub, and when my tormentors were not looking, I escaped along it. We can fasten the end of our thread to the top of anything, and let ourselves down by spinning out more, or rise by pulling it in.”
“O, yes!” replied Luxz, “I have some just hatching. As you go around the corner of that board you can see the nest—all fuzzy, like cotton. A few are just crawling out. They are very small as yet.”
Then the ants bade the spider good-day, and went down the fence, stopping as they passed it to see the nest, where the little wee spiders were just taking their first few steps among the delicate filmy threads surrounding their eggs. How many there were!