The Spider and the Mouse

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 9, 4 December 1931, Page 9

The Spider and the Mouse

One of the strangest stories ever heard, told by the Children’s Newspaper, comes from a natural history professor in America. It happened in a family dining room where people were sitting quietly reading and sewing. The famous story of “King Bruce and the Spider” is quite eclipsed. A tiny, unfamiliar noise made itself heard in the silence, and one of the family, creeping about, found that it came from under the sideboard. Somebody said it was just a mouse, but one young man was rather interested in the unusual nature of the sound, and lay flat on the floor to investigate. There was a space of about eight inches between the bottom of the sideboard and the floor. The watcher was able presently to discover the extraordinary source of the tiny noise. It was made by a mouse that had been captured by a spider. The spider, not much bigger than a black ant, had spun with great rapidity a number of lines around the mouse, and the mouse, terrified beyond measure, could find no way of freeing itself. As fast as it broke one foot away the others were freshly imprisoned. Now, with its victim webbod round and round, the spider was trying to haul the mouse up to its fortress on the sideboard ledge. Eight inches is a good height for a spider to drag a beetle or any heavy insect. It seemed to the watcher that for a spider to get a mouse to its ledge was a feat of engineering heroic to attempt but utterly hopeless. For three hours the indomitable spider worked at the task with pulleys and cords and a crane of its own contriving, no doubt. Fraction by fraction the terrified mouse left behind the safety of the ground, hanging suspended by a thousand threads. Ceaselessly the mouse wriggled and kicked, trying to break its bonds, but at the end of three hours it was on the ledge, captive, close to the enemy’s fortress. Then the spider presumably sat down to mop its brow and have a rest, and the young man who had lain on his waistcoat watching the amazing operation decided that it would be interesting to explore the fortress. Like all good-minded people, he had pity on the vanquished, The young man swept his fingers round the shivering little mouse and freed it. It scuttled away, watched no doubt, by an enraged spider. A probing finger then explored the crevice and found another little mouse, dead as a stone, and as carefully swathed in spider’s web as if he had been a mummy.