THE LABYRINTH SPIDER

Insect Adventures by Jean-Henri Fabre and Louise Hasbrouck Zimm, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE LABYRINTH SPIDER

CHAPTER XXIII. THE LABYRINTH SPIDER

WHILE the Garden Spiders are incomparable weavers, many other Spiders have even more ingenious devices for catching game. Some of them are real celebrities, who are mentioned in all the books.

Certain Bird Spiders, or American Tarantulas, live in a burrow like the Tarantula I have been telling you about, but their burrow is more perfect than hers. My Tarantula surrounds the mouth of her hole with a simple curb, a mere collection of tiny pebbles, sticks, and silk; the American ones fix a movable floor to theirs, a round shutter with a hinge, a groove, and a set of bolts. When one of these Tarantulas comes home, the lid drops into the groove and fits so exactly one cannot tell where it joins. If any one from outside tries to raise the trap-door, the Spider pushes the bolt,—that is to say, plants her claws into certain holes on the opposite side to the hinge,—props herself against the wall, and holds the door firmly.

Another, the Water Spider, builds herself an elegant silken diving-bell, in which she stores air. She waits in it for the coming of game and keeps cool meanwhile. On scorching hot days, hers must be a real palace of luxury, such as men have sometimes ventured to build under water, with mighty blocks of stone and marble. Tiberius, the wicked Roman Emperor, had such a submarine palace; but his is only a hateful memory, whereas the Water Spider’s dainty tower still flourishes.

If I had had the chance to observe these Spiders, I should gladly add a few unpublished facts to their life-history; but I must give up the idea. The Water Spider is not found in my district. The American Tarantula, the expert in hinged doors, I saw once only, by the side of a path. I was occupied with something else, and did not give it more than a passing glance. I have never seen it again.

But it is not only the uncommon insects that are worth attention. The common ones, if carefully observed, can tell us things just as important. I am interested in the Labyrinth Spider, which I find oftener than any other in the fields. Several times a week, in July, I go to study my Spiders on the spot, early in the morning, before the sun beats fiercely on one’s neck. The children come with me, each provided with an orange in case they get thirsty.

We soon discover high silk buildings, the threads beaded with dew and glittering in the sun. The children are wonderstruck at those glorious chandeliers, so that they even forget their oranges for a moment. I am not indifferent to them, either. Our Spider’s labyrinth is a splendid spectacle. That and the concert of the Thrushes are worth getting up for.

Half an hour’s heat, and the magic jewels disappear with the dew. Now is the time to look at the webs. Here is one spreading its sheet over a large cluster of rock-roses; it is the size of a handkerchief. Many guy-ropes moor it to the brushwood. It covers the bush like a piece of white muslin.

The web is flat at the edges and gradually hollows into a crater, not unlike the bell of a hunting-horn. At the center is a funnel whose neck, narrowing by degrees, is eight or nine inches deep and leads back into the leafy thicket.

At the entrance to the tube sits the Spider, who looks at us and shows no great excitement at our presence. She is gray, modestly adorned on the thorax with two black ribbons and on the abdomen with two stripes in which white specks alternate with brown. She has a sort of double tail at the end of her body, a rather curious feature in a Spider.

I expected to find, at the bottom of the Spider’s funnel, a wadded cell where she might rest in her hours of leisure. On the contrary, there is only a sort of door, which stands always ajar so that the Spider may escape at any time through the grass and gain the open.

Above, in the Spider’s web, there is a forest of ropes. It might be the rigging of a ship disabled by a storm. They run from every twig of the supporting boughs, they are fastened to the tip of every branch. There are long ropes and short ropes, upright and slanting, straight and bent, taut and slack, all criss-cross and a-tangle, to the height of three feet or so. The whole makes a chaos of netting, a real labyrinth which none but the very strongest insects can break through.

There is nothing like the sticky snare of the Garden Spiders here. The threads are not sticky, but they are very bewildering. See this small Locust who has lighted on the rigging. He is unable to get a steady foothold on that shaky support; he flounders about; and the more he struggles, the more he is entangled. The Spider, looking at him from her funnel, lets him have his way. She does not run up the ropes; she waits until the desperate prisoner in his struggles falls on the main part of the web.

Then she comes, flings herself upon her prey, and slowly drains his blood. The Locust is lifeless at the first bite; the Spider’s poison has settled him.

When laying-time is at hand, the Spider changes her residence; she leaves her web, which is still in excellent condition; she does not come back to it. The time has come to make the nest. But where? The Spider knows well; I am in the dark. I spend whole mornings ransacking the bushes, until at last I learn the secret. The nest is some distance away from the web, in a low, thick cluster of bushes; it is a clumsy bundle of dead leaves, roughly drawn together with silk threads. Under this rude covering is a pouch of fine texture containing the egg-casket.

I am disappointed in the appearance of this Spider’s nest, until I remember that she probably cannot do better in the places where she builds. In the midst of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead leaves and twigs, there is no room for an elegant piece of work. By way of experiment, I carry half a dozen Labyrinth Spiders into my laboratory near the laying-time, place them in large wire-gauze cages, standing in earthen pans filled with sand, with a sprig of thyme planted in the center to give a support for each nest. Now they will show what they can do.

The experiment works perfectly. By the end of August I have six nests, magnificent in shape and of a dazzling whiteness. The Spiders have had elbow-room, and they have done their best. The nests are ovals of exquisite white muslin, nearly as large as a Hen’s egg. They are open at either end. The front-entrance broadens into a gallery; the back-entrance tapers into a funnel-neck. It is somewhat the same construction as that of the Labyrinth web. Even the labyrinth is repeated, for in front of the bell-shaped mouth is a tangle of threads. The Spider has her pattern by heart, and uses it on all occasions.

This palace of silk is a guard-house. Behind the soft, milky, partly transparent wall glimmers the egg-casket, its shape vaguely suggesting the star of some order of knighthood. It is a large pocket, of a splendid dead-white, with pillars on every side which keep it motionless in the center of the nest. There are about ten of these pillars; they are slender in the middle and wider at both ends. They form corridors around the central room. The mother walks gravely to and fro under the arches of these corridors, which are like the cloisters of a nunnery; she stops first here, then there; she listens to all that happens inside the satin wrapper of her egg-wallet. I would not disturb her for anything; but I find, from nests I have picked up in the fields, that the purse contains about a hundred eggs, very pale amber-yellow beads.

When I remove the outer white-satin wall, I come upon a kernel of earthy matter, grains of sand mixed with the silk. However did they get there? Did they soak through the rain-water? No, the wrapper is spotless white outside. They have been put there by the mother herself. She has built around her eggs, to protect them from parasites, a wall composed of a great deal of sand and a little silk.

Inside this is still another silken wrapper, and then come the little Spiders, already hatched out and moving about in their nursery.

But, to go back—why does the mother leave her fine web when laying-time comes, and make her nest so far away? She has her reason, you may depend upon it. Her large net, like a sheet, with the labyrinth stretched above, is very conspicuous; parasites will not fail to come running at this signal, showing up against the green; if her nest is near, they will certainly find it; and a strange grub, feasting on a hundred new-laid eggs, will ruin her home. So the wise Labyrinth Spider shifts her quarters, and goes off at night to explore the neighborhood for a less dangerous retreat for her coming family. The low brambles dragging along the ground, keeping their leaves through the winter, and catching the dead leaves from the oaks hard by, or rosemary tufts, low and bushy, suit her perfectly. In such spots I usually find her nest.

Many Spiders leave their nests after they have laid the eggs, but the Labyrinth, like the Crab-spider, remains to watch over hers. She does not become thin and wither away, like the Crab-spider. She keeps her appetite, she is on the lookout for Locusts; and so she builds a hunting-box, a tangle of threads, on the outside of her nest.

When she is not hunting, as we have seen, she walks the corridors around her eggs, she listens to find out if all is well. If I shake the nest at any point with a straw, she quickly runs up to inquire what is happening. Probably she keeps off parasites in this way.

The Spider’s appetite for Locusts shows that she must have more to do. Insects, unlike some human beings, eat only that they may work. When I watch her, I find out what this work is. For nearly another month, I see her adding layer upon layer to the walls of her nest. These were at first semi-transparent; they become thick and opaque. This is why the Spider eats, so that she may fill her silk-glands and make a thick wrapper for her nest.

About the middle of September the little Spiders come out of their eggs, but they do not leave their house, where they are to spend the winter packed in soft wadding. The mother continues to watch and spin, but she grows less active from day to day. She eats fewer Locusts; she sometimes scorns those whom I myself entangle in her trap. But for four or five months longer she keeps on making her inspection-rounds of her egg-casket, happy at hearing the new-born Spiders swarming inside. At last, when October ends, she clutches her children’s nursery and dies. She has done all that a mother’s devotion can do; the special Providence that watches over tiny animals will do the rest. When spring comes, the youngsters will come out of their snug homes and scatter all over the neighborhood on their floating threads, like the little Crab-spiders you have read about.

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This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre and Louise Hasbrouck Zimm (2014). Insect Adventures. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/45812/pg45812-images.html

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