The Way of the Wild

h that aperture, for three days, had come a leggy, racy-looking, wolfish black spider. Each day, as it grew hot

up on her side. Only when one of the latter's delicate feelers shifted round towards her, as though in some uncanny way conscious of her approach, did she leap back as if she had touched an electric wire. Then she froze-flat. The wasp was lying curled up, as we have said,

id not mov

had been her last meal, months ago-marking the vital spot upon her prey, aiming for the shot, which must be true, for one does not miss i

the wasp was not there, or, rather, her vital spot wasn't. She had kicked herself round on her side, like a cart-wheel, lying flat, with her feet, and the spider's ja

d one saw, too, at a glance that she was different from ordinary wasps-would make two, in fact, of any ordinary wasp; and her great jaws looked as if they could eat one and comfortably deal with more; whilst her dagger-sting, now unsheathed and ready-probably for the first time-could deliver a wound twice as deep and dead

-the yellow flag, so to speak. The fear of it is upon every insect

ght they act. The spider attacked now so quickly that she seemed to have vanish

being a spider, she never moved anywhere, not even upon a spring, without anchoring a line of web down first. Therefore, an inch from the ground, she fetched up with a jerk upon th

ad happened, apparently to scheme out the best way to possess herself of a kingdom and become a queen in fact as well as in name. Really, she was cleaning herself-combing her antenna

had stood the latter at all-and when, with a subdued inward sort of hum, she finally launched herself in fl

nd white wing-bars in the sun. He appeared to recognize her sinister yellow shield in time, however, and returned to his perch with a f

y sat in the sunlight; and the wasp, apparently still half-aw

den-headed baby, and that silent, yellow she-devil, crawling,

wasp-perhaps for that baby. Wherefore there was a little scream, a pair of woman's arms swept down and whisked that baby into the air, and a high-heeled shoe whisked the astonished wasp into a corner. Here she swore savagely, vibrating her head with tremendous spe

he window. She seemed anxious to make sure of not getting into the house again. She flew right away, rising high to top the gard

As a matter of fact, she was looking for a site for a city. She had ambition, and would found her a city, a city of her very own, with generous streets at right angles, on the American plan; and she would be queen of it. It was a big idea, and we should have said an impossibl

ck and hairy spider, with two hindlegs missing on the offside, spun round in t

r a minute or so, came out again with the air of one dissatisfied. Half-a-dozen times she came out tail first, buzzing warnings and very angr

y for all the little whiskered ones. But this tunnel, bored by the miner mole, ran nowhither, having caved in not far from the entrance, and was very sound of construction, with a nice dry slope. She selected a wide spot

ust know where her city was, must make absolutely dead sure, certain, of finding it again when she went out. Otherwise, if she lost it-well, there would be an end to it before i

everything, great and small-and jotting down in indelible memory fluid, upon whatever she kept for a brain, just precisely the position of every landmark. And as she rose h

it was some job; but once

body had "jumped her claim" in the interval. She found an ant, red and ravenous, taking too professional an interest in

arth outside beyond the entrance. This also took time, though she worked at fever-pitch, almost with fury

hinges. But the wood was rotting, and she was no fool. She knew her job-the job she had never done before, by the way-and after humming around it in a fretful, undecided sort of fashion for some while, she flew o

nglements set by spiders. As a rule you didn't see these last at all-nor did she; but her yellow-and-black badge usually won

sought to pounce upon her in this task. He was long-legged, and keen, and lean, and very swift; but she shot aloft just in time; and when she came d

like a nail-scrape, the mark she made-and masticating it and moistening it

, and she reappeared again, backing out, "looking daggers," as we say, and brandishing her poisoned

and amazingly slender black wasp, one of those hermits who seem to consecrate their lives to lonely working for a family they never see. This unhappy one slid down

before she had finished. To these rootlets she fastened-gummed would be a more correct word-her pellet of wasp-paper, in the form of a thin layer, and hurried away, singing, for more. This was, so to speak, the foundation-stone of the city, laid, be it noticed, not haphazard-our que

attle with a robber-fly, who appeared set upon robbing her of her blood. It tried, like the beetle, to stalk her and pounce upon her back, what time she was planing out wood for paper-pulp; but her back wasn't ther

r, she, was received with the point-the poisoned point-and, turning like a spent lightning-flash to avoid it, found the queen hard on her heels, following all down the gay hedge-ditch, humming high, in nearly a shriek of rage. Finally, she turned, to do battle for her li

few seconds the wasp got up and flew home again, quite unperturbed. The robber-fly did not get up, and she

ere-from, in the middle, a stalk, also of paper, which widened out at its base, and became, as it were, the outlines of four six-sided cells. The cells were in the shape of a cross-that cross which

tims, during the still, silent, silver night, she hummed very severely, like an electric fan, to let the intruders know who she was, and they mostly backed

d the expression, in consequence; and the other was a carnivorous beetle, in black, purple-shot armor, and armed with jaws toothed like lobsters' claws. The queen took some nasty scars from those same jaws before she got home with the poisoned p

use, thirsting for blood,

ay. She jumped into full hustle right off, you see. She did not merely work; she superworked. Forced to short hours by her constitution, she had to make up for it in the time she g

rd's beak, and her poison-dagger was useless here; nor do fly-catchers often miss. This, however, was an occasion when one of them did-by an eighth of an inch-a

s in all. Each cell was closed, of course, at the top, the top being its floor, and open at the bottom, the bottom being, if I may so put it, the top; for, as has already been said, wasp cities are built upside-down, and everybody walks and hangs on his head, being so fitted for the purpose. If you don't hang, you tumble s

d an egg-it was very minute, that egg-inside the cell, gumming it against the top, on the angle

s and forwards to get wood-pulp from the rails for paper manufacture-she used paper for everything; and, for another thing, she began to roof over the whole affair with a hanging umbrella made of layers of the finest paper that you ever did see-much finer than that made by the ordinary common or garden worker-wasp of the jam-pots a

in wet weather, and to store up and multiply the heat from her body. Terrific heat, to be sure; nevertheless important in

e-goodness alone knows how she squeezed in any spare time at all during those hustling days!-her first, and generally her last, act was to clean. She could not afford dirt. To be dirty, with he

way, sipping honey and humming a wicked little

ed, and vi

buds of y

ocks all si

e meadows w

o long that one wondered what she was doing there. She was licking up the "honey-dew," which, translated, is the juice exuded by the plant-lice or "green-fly," which swarmed all over the rose-trees. This "honey-dew" was sweet, and in great demand among

somewhere else, and adding her heat to the natural stuffiness of the place, though one would scarcely have thought she could have made much difference. At

bly blind, and helpless; and it would have fallen head downwards out of the cell, as it hatched, if it had not had the sense to hook its tail into its own

y it; but what was the use of setting up to be a queen, anyway, if she could not do that? And, moreover, you've got to do your

ing to show its hunger, was alive, sound, and quite all there, quit home in a hurry, and with a loud buzz, in search of rations. But there was a

one may so put it, than living, infinitesimal "white" grapes. That she was challenged by a sentry ant-about as big to her as a bulldog to us-that the sentry gave the alarm, that the guard turned out from one of the ants' "cows

e glistening, corsleted devil queen-mother, with her lugubrious, mask-like face, and the wriggling, hanging sack babe, and the luckless, fo

king care to hook itself up to its shell by the tail at once, lest it perish. And the queen's work from that moment really began. Till then she had

he long, hot afternoons by her wicked warning drone as she came sailing in at the open window, like the insolent pirate that she was, to go out again a minute later with a helpless fly between her jaws. The first heat of the sun, drinking up the dew, would discover her sailing forth to war; his full, sizzling rays would reveal her waging violent warfare with the bluebottle flies over some carcass; into his amber light of the noon her yellow flag would suddenly rise

er; and time at last when, one after the other, each grub, having grown out of more than one suit of clothes and donned new ones, cast its skin for the last time, refused all further food, spun a cocoon of silk with a dome-shaped silken floor to each cell, and for a period retired from the prying eyes o

to show that it was going to be different from any other fine day; yet, as

een happening and changes taking place. The domed floors of several of the cells were palpitati

lone in the darkness among the cells, as she saw her triumph evolving before her eyes. And, almost

y. Indeed, it could not well be anything

an animal, only that its jaws were like unto the jaws of a lobster. It was a fearsome apparition, and very much la

and the awakening city with her, should be cut off-unthinkable and impossible, unthinkable and maddening. Therefore she fought

that follow

nd over, continued the struggle in the dark among the refuse, the queen eternally feeling with her poison-dagger for a space to drive home h

s are, and it could not last long. It was too te

he same instant, with a supreme effort, she bent double and shot herself free, the last convulsive, shearing crush of her foe's laws clashing to

ell the first of her children-and citizens at last-the first limp, clambering, damp, newly p

nd wings hardened, these new young worker-wasps only did light labor, acting as nurses to the others that were following, and so on, they quickly took upon their own shoulders the whole of the work of the city: the nursing and feeding of the young, the hunting, the building, the scavenging,

and contains over 11,000 cells; and the queen is s