I triggered the call to death.
Clumsy and thoughtless in my human way, I dropped my foot into a
clump of needle-and-thread grass.
That, the call to death.
A small grasshopper launched forth from the grass and, as I
watched, veered directly into a low and messy spider web festooned between a
weathered juniper stump and a tuft of bunchgrass.
The flight ended with the hopper hopelessly trapped in an awkward
upside-down sprawl across the web. The
hopper quivered there, unable to escape.
I was about to reach down and flick the hopper free when I saw a
black widow spider sprint out along the web from a hole under the stump
The black widow positively danced a jig on the grasshopper,
injecting poison, assessing, and throwing silk to bind the victim in place.
I had three choices:
1. Walk away.
2. Dispatch both predator and quarry.
3. Witness until the end.
So, both curious and dismayed, I watched.
After an initial ambush, the black widow backed away a bit,
waiting, I suppose, for its sweet poison to incapacitate the hopper. After a sufficient time, the spider rushed
the hopper again, flicking silk, spinning the hopper, wrapping the insect into
a gruesome bundle.
The spider’s back legs blurred with motion.
Within a few seconds, the black widow had wrapped the hopper into
a tight bundle. She then snipped the
bundle free from the web, attached it to her abdomen, and dragged the bundle
back into her black lair under the long-dead stump.
Neither Edgar Allan Poe nor Stephen King could have written a
quicker horror than this.
I walked on, careful of my step.
—Mitchell Hegman
Years ago I worked for a nonprofit organization that was in an old house. Unfortunately my most vivid memories of working there are regarding the assorted creatures that also thought the place was also their home. I glanced over at the wall next to the front door one day and saw a huge black spider with a big butt hanging out there. Without thinking, I grabbed a ream of paper and threw it at the wall. I hit the spider, the package of paper burst open and everyone in the house came running. I said it was a black widow, I was told it wasn't. Somehow bravery reserves kicked in and I scooped up the carcass with several sheets of the exploded paper and presented it to my up until that point somewhat annoyed by my outburst coworkers. Upon seeing the telltale red hourglass, they all agreed that I had actually under-reacted, I should have burned the place to the ground.
ReplyDeleteHaha. A lot of people have the same reaction to black widows. They are the creepiest-looking of all spiders. And they can get pretty darned big for a spider. I have two corners in my garage where I find black widows nearly every year. I have not entertained the idea of burning down my house just yet. But...man, are they creepy!
ReplyDeleteI grew up in NW Montana and we would get some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen in my life up there. My dad almost cut his throat shaving one morning when this giant black and yellow monster fell out of the exhaust vent in the bathroom (old house/built when the Noxon Rapids Dam was under construction) and landed on the floor with an audible smack at his feet. My mom, who is our resident spider killer, was in Minnesota visiting her family at the time. We did the only logical thing, which was to use one of her metal mixing bowls and entrap the SOB until she came home. A week later. We just carried on as normal, carefully avoiding the spider jail in the bathroom. And yes it was still alive when she dealt with it!
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