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Boys' Column.

A TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE. BY ALLAN FORMAN. One rainy day, as the children were amusing themselves by ransacking their uncle Harry’s closets, Tom pulled his hand out suddenly from the back part of a deep drawer, and shouted triumphantly. “ Preserves!” at the same time holding out a large glass jar for inspection. A cry of disgust followed, for instead of preserves there was nothing in the bottle but a strange-looking animal floating in some brown liquid. “ Pah I It’s a horrid bug,” said Alice, turning up her nose in disgust. “’Tain’t,” contradicted Charlie, regardless of his grammar. “ It’s a tarantula.” “ And what is that but a bug ?” replied Alice. “ It’s a spider,” said Charlie. “ You ask Uncle Harry if it isn’t.” In the mean time Tom and Alice had taken the jar over to the desk where Uncle Harry was writing. “ What is this, Uncle Harry ?” said Alice. “Itis a tarantula. I brought it home from California with me.” “ I told you so !” exclaimed Charlie, from the closet. “It is a kind of spider, and one of the largest that lives in this eountry. They don’t make webs like ordinary spiders, But dig a hole in the ground and line it with a sort of silky web like the cocoon of a silk-worm. Their hole is about six inches deep, and is closed by a fanny little trap-door made of the same silky lining, and covered on the outside with sticks and gravel so cleverly that one can rarely find a tarantula’s burrow unless you see him going in ; and even if you do see him going in, it is very difficult to get him to come out, as he pulls his trap-door shut after him, and holds it tight from the inside.” “If he don’t build a web, how does he catch flies and things?” inquired Charlie. “He j\imps after them. A lively tarantula can jump from three to five feet, and when he once catches hold of any kind of a bug or small bird with those great hairy legs, it has but little chance to get away.” “Is their bite really so poisonous?” asked Alice, eying the jar rather timidly, as if she was afraid the terrible insect would get away. “ That question is a hard one to answer. Some people who have lived in countries where they are common claim that is only fatal in a few cases, while others seem to think it is deadly poison.” “ What are you laughing at, Uncle Harry ?” demanded Charlie. “ I was thinking of the most horrible night I ever experienced,” replied his uncle. You know,” he continued, “ while I was in the West I spent some two weeks camping out in the mountains with a party of four young men. We had an old cabin, where we slept at night, and we spent our days delightfully, fishing, hunting, geologizing, and botanizing. We had not been in camp long before we discovered a tarantula village not far from our cabin, and we all determined to catch some specimens to take home with us. At first we had considerable trouble in catching them; they were so lively and so ugly that we always ended in killing them in self-defence. At last a brilliant member of the party discovered that by placing a wide-mouthed bottle over the mouth of the tarantula’s burrow, and then thumping on the ground around it, the animal would crawl out into the bottle, and the captor could turn the bottle over, clap a piece of board over the top, and secure his prisoner. As soon as the discovery was made known, all the old pickle jars were called into requisition, and as the former occupants of the cabin had left a number, we were soon lucky, or unlucky, enough to have about twenty-five large specimens. We covered the jars with bits of shingle, and set them on a shelf which was nailed to one side of the cabin. Everything went well, and we determined that as soon as we had leisure we should kill them with chloroform, and preserve them in spirits as that one is. But one night, after we had all got comfortably settled for sleep, one of the party thought that he was thirsty, so rising carefully from his bunk, he groped his way over to the corner, under the shelf, where the water-pail stood; he had his drink, and forgetting the existence of the shelf, raised his head. Crash! down came the rotten old shelf, and down came the jars with the tarantulas in them. The party heard the fall, and like one man sprang from their beds and rushed for the door, but before they had got half-way across the floor they remembered that the tarantulas were loose, and they stopped ; a moment more and it was too late. We were all afraid to move, for fear that we would put our feet on a tarantula; so there we stood, as if turned into statues. In a short time our positions became strained and cramped, but we did not dare to change them. Our nerves became excited, and we imagined that we could feel them crawling up our backs and walking over our bare feet. The minutes seemed lengthened to hours, and the hours seemed months. At last the day began to break, but we had manufactured curtains out of old newspapers, that we might sleep undisturbed by the light. Oh, how we bemoaned our laziness ! Finally it grew light enough to see, and we carefully opened the door and went out. One of the party went back into the cabin and got our clothes, and after examining them carefully we dressed ourselves.” “ And nobody was bitten?” said Alice, with a sigh of relief. “No,” replied her uncle, rising from his chair as the supper-bell rang; “ but I don t think I ever was so badly scared before or since.”— Udrper'a Young People.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/PBS18830127.2.19.11

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

Word count
Tapeke kupu
992

Boys' Column. Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

Boys' Column. Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1260, 27 January 1883, Page 2 (Supplement)

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