Nature Story

         Once upon a time there was a little gray egg sack. It hung in the corner of a window frame all winter long. It contained hundreds of eggs, each one destined to hatch out a baby spider in the spring. All these babies were orphans already because their mother had eaten their father just before she laid the eggs and died.

         Spiders’ honeymoons are very brief.

         When the warm spring sunshine touched the gray egg sack some amazing things began to happen. Little spiders began crawling out. They looked like tiny dark specks but each one had eight eyes and eight legs. It was time for them to go forth and seek their fortune.

         The next part of this story might shock you but you have to understand, spiders are not very nice creatures. And these were very young spiders with nobody to teach them their manners.

         The baby spiders were hungry after all winter in the egg sac. They began eating one another up as fast s they could. The smaller weaker ones could not get away and their hungry siblings gobbled them with gusto.

         Soon the smaller weaker ones were all gone and it became a fight for survival among the bigger ones. The bigger ones were a lot bigger by then, as you can imagine, after all that eating.

         At last the feast was over with one spider left. He wiped his mandibles and surveyed the world.

         While he sat wondering what he should do first, a bird swooped down and ate him.

THE END

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