II. Mrs. Garden Spider "At Home"
Mrs. Garden Spider won't come to see you and buzz by the hour. If you go to see her she'll tell you plainly that she doesn't care for society. It takes all her time to build her house, earn her living, and bring up her babies. She isn't asking favors of anyone, and she'll be obliged to you if you won't stand around and scare flies away.
But she makes such a pretty house that you feel like going anyhow. It's a gossamer wheel of a curtain. You can find it in almost any garden, stretched across a fence corner, or between the low branches of stout shrubs. You won't often see the little gray and brown mistress of it. That house is merely a sun-parlor of a net, spread in the open for the unwary fly. The lady of the house is of such a retiring nature that she prefers to live in a dark tunnel den behind the parlor. Stand out of sight—and remember Madame has from two to eight eyes in her head, and can see all around the compass—and fling a bit of dry leaf on the web. She darts out. She views that leaf with disgust, thinking the wind has played a trick on her. Very likely she will push it overboard, for she keeps her house clean and shining.
Any time a hard rain or wind comes along the pretty house may be wrecked. Then you may watch Mrs Spider build it again. She has to do it before breakfast, too, or go hungry. Get an opera glass, if you can, and watch her at a distance. She sits out on a leaf or twig or fence post, looking over the building site. The color of dead wood, half an inch long, with eight thread-like legs, and darting movements, she isn't easy to follow.
She drops, or jumps, from one support to another, paying out a tiny, gray silk cable behind her, and fastening it wherever she can. Soon she has an irregular space inclosed. Do you know how fine those lines are? You would have to lay four or five thousand of them side by side, to make a ribbon an inch wide. You can see her run around those lines and pull them with her hind foot to test their strength If one breaks she spins another.
She jumps, or drops, across the space, carrying a line, and fastens it to the farther side. She runs back to the middle, doubling the line as she goes, and jumps across at right angles. Soon, she has her .space cut into four equal parts, as neatly as mama cuts an
