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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



INTO TRAPDOOR TUBES HIS FLASHLIGHT SHOOTS A RAY OF HOPE 



A Cyrtid fly pupa? A wasp cocoon? Or only a blank? The author's gambling thrill comes 

 when he checks in the day's "bag" of spider homes. Once he drew 74 successive blanks — and then 

 found an Ocnaea smithi pupa in number 73. When he peeped into an unopened tube, just for this 

 photograph, he found — believe it or not — a tine wasp cocoon in the first of 225 nests collected this year ! 



and slipped through (page 812). Like a 

 bhie-black bullet she flashed down the tube 

 and struck the waiting spider (page 813). 

 The rough-and-tumble fight that followed 

 was too fast for the eye to follow or for the 

 camera to catch. 



The spider outweighed the wasp fully ten 

 to one. Psammy almost disappeared in the 

 hugging clutch of the eight powerful legs. 

 The spider's needle-pointed fangs struck at 

 her again and again. You would have bet a 

 hundred to one on the spider, and 1 would 

 have agreed with you. But, not so fast! 



The wicked-looking fangs were only 

 glancing harmlessly off Psammy 's steel-like 

 armor plates, while her facile abdomen, 

 as pliant and powerful as a swordsman's 

 wrist, was working busily within that fierce 

 embrace, jabbing again and again with her 

 daggerlike sting as she sought an opening 

 in the spider's armor. 



Such a battle lacks the spectacular quali- 

 ties of a duel between expert swordsmen. 

 It is more like a rough-and-tumble fight 

 between a giant and an adroit dwarf — 

 where the dwarf has a poisoned dagger up 

 his sleeve. We might not even see the 



dagger, but its effect upon the giant will 

 tell us when it finds its mark. And so it 

 was in this battle. 



Suddenly the action slowed down. The 

 big spider wilted into a limp parahsis. 

 Psammy 's sting had found its mark. \>ry 

 calmly she relaxed the bulldog grip of 

 her mandibles and disentangled herself. 

 \\'hen she stepped clear she never once 

 glanced back. She did not wait for the 

 count. She seemed to know the potency 

 of that hypodermic shot of knockout 

 poison. 



Anyway, she knew that the fight was over, 

 and calmly proceeded to "wash her face 

 and hands" with all the smug satisfaction of 

 the cat that has just eaten the canarv! 



CHAMPION "DIES WITH BOOTS ON'' 



In the long run, however, these efficient 

 hunters fall afoul of Nature's law of com- 

 pensation, and ''get theirs." The spiders are 

 so much more powerful that a single slip, 

 an instant's carelessness on Psammy 's part, 

 may prove fatal. Even my champion layer, 

 after depositing forty eggs on forty van- 

 quished spiders, died with her boots on at 



