Arachne fastidiously dining. You see, she drinks her meals. Having caught some flying insect, she'd darted out and killed it with a quick sting of poison that would've affected you or me like a bee sting.
Then, quick as mercury, she rolled it up in silk taken from the web itself. Now there she was with this big white ice cream cone, sucking everything liquid out of it. She'd left a large hole in the center of the web when she'd taken the silk to wrap her bug. She's untroubled by my circling camera. Actually, she can only tell light from dark. Her sense of touch is a lot better than her vision.
When I bump the window near her, she reacts by jumping up and down in the web. It's a kind of threatening Maori Haka war dance. We may be friends, but friends understand about boundaries. White's Charlotte lasted through Indian summer; then died of old age. Arachne has been with us for fifteen days as I record this. Unlike Charlotte, she's woven me no messages in her web. You, our viewers, are passionate about these stories we tell.
Take your passion further by supporting and driving more of the nature news you know and love. This microscopic image comes from a study into the development of spider eyes, and it shows a common house spider embryo still developing inside its They look different and pounce around on different continents, but these two spiders share an appetite for one thing: mosquitoes. And the scientists In The Field Backyard wildlife.
By Earth Touch News November 03 Michael Sims was reading White's collected letters when he found a reply to a group of schoolchildren, in which the author wrote that "I didn't like spiders at first, but then I began watching one of them, and soon saw what a wonderful creature she was and what a skilful weaver.
I named her Charlotte. Sims's The Story of Charlotte's Web, which has just been published, details how White spotted an elaborate spider web one morning in the autumn of Watching it over the next few weeks, he saw the spider was spinning an egg sac, and when later that autumn he realised the spider had disappeared, he decided to take the egg sac with him when he had to return to New York and his job as a contributor to the New Yorker.
He was so interested, he got a stepladder to take a closer look. After that, he never saw the spider again. When he was getting ready to go to New York City for the winter, he decided to take the egg sack with him. He cut it down with a razor blade and put it in a candy box with holes punched in the top. Then he left the box on top of his bureau in his New York bedroom. Soon enough, the egg sack hatched and baby spiders emerged from the box.
We all lived together happily for a couple of weeks, and then somebody whose duty it was to dust my dresser balked, and I broke up the show. At the present time, three of Charlotte's granddaughters are trapping at the foot of the stairs in my barn cellar, where the morning light, coming through the east window, illuminates their embroidery and makes it seem even more wonderful than it is.
0コメント