by Emma Read
‘OK, good. No touching.’
Zoe smiled and hugged her dad. ‘Thank you, you’re amazing. And if I convince you they’re friendly, will you call off BugKILL!? I don’t want all that stinky pesticide sprayed in our house.’
Dad folded his arms. ‘Hmm, I don’t know about that. I mean, the normal ones are OK – I appreciate the flies being eaten, but I’m not happy with that potentially deadly thing in the house.’
Zoe sighed and stabbed her spaghetti a little too hard.
The following morning Milton felt lousy. He’d tossed and turned so much in the night that he got tangled up in his own web, which was extremely embarrassing. And no matter how many woodlice he ate for breakfast, he couldn’t stop thinking about all the homeless spiders, forced out of their houses, then hunted down in the gardens too. He and his friends would soon be joining them, if he couldn’t come up with an idea.
Audrey stopped by as he checked his larder for the fifth time for more comfort food.
‘Oh, Milton, eating woodlice isn’t the answer. Talk to us. Let’s plan. You don’t have to do this yourself. Ooh, is that damselfly fresh?’ She was talking extremely quickly.
Milton looked at her glumly. ‘Help yourself.’
She crunched on the lightly toasted wing, a slightly manic look on her face. ‘Because, you know, BugKILL! will be here in nine days and we ought to be moving on to phase two of the plan already.’
‘Have you thought of a phase two?’ Milton looked at her hopefully, but Audrey was pacing and fiddling and clicking her jaws.
‘No! That’s why I’m here. Come on, Milton, you’ve got to snap out of it. We need you. What are we going to do?’ She grabbed him and shook him by four shoulders. ‘Talk to me!’
Milton gave her a very long stare.
‘What?’ she said, checking herself in case she had bits of trailing web stuck to her claws.
‘You’re right, Audrey, talking is the answer.’
Audrey sat down, stopped eating and leant towards him. ‘That’s the spirit. I’m all leg hairs.’
‘No! Not to you, no offence. To the other widows. I need to talk to them. I need to explain what’s happening, about the story, the googling, about our deadly cousins, and maybe we can come up with something together. You know what they say, many cephalothoraxes are better than one.’
Audrey didn’t look convinced. ‘Do they say that?’
‘I’m just one spider, too small to make a difference. But together, who knows what we can achieve? False widows united! Will you help me gather them for a meeting? I’m thinking we should start small – an intimate group of false widows from the fences. Then they can spread the word.’ A sparkle returned to Milton’s eyes, but worry lines formed on Audrey’s face.
‘Milton, are you sure this a good idea? Shouldn’t we be trying to figure out how to get Mr Macey to call off BugKILL!? I mean, I know you want to help, I understand that, but . . .’
‘But I’m too small, right? I’ve been thinking that all night – I’m too small to make a difference, but all it takes is for one spider to have a brilliant idea. I’m not talking about changing the world. Just talking to a few little spiders like me, it’s no big deal.’ He munched an entire damselfly wing down in one go and felt much, much better.
Milton paced nervously on a high shelf in the shed, looking out across a sea of brown dots, in various shades and sizes.
‘How many spiders are out there, do you think?’
‘At least a hundred,’ said Audrey.
Milton tried to swallow, but his mouth was as dry as week-old lacewing. ‘That’s at least eight hundred eyes looking at me, then.’ He was sure he’d said ‘small gathering’ to her.
She shrugged. ‘You did say many cephalothoraxes . . .’
‘I suppose I did.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Let’s do this.’
Milton coughed, ‘Ahem.’ But no one noticed. He looked at Audrey and bit his claw.
Why don’t I ever think things through?
He tried to focus on the false widows and ignore the other species. Easy enough with the camouflaged crab spiders, but big-eyed, stripy, jumping spiders were bouncing around, and worst of all, a whole group of fat garden spiders were hanging in the doorway. The GS gang practically ran the garden, usually by pushing the smaller spiders around. A particularly annoying one was dangling from a plastic spade near the front. She was distracting everyone by juggling – showing off because she was missing a leg.
Do not mess this up.
Because then he would definitely have to stick to dark corners.
And he didn’t want to.
‘Oi!’ yelled Audrey at the top of her voice. For such a slender spider she really could raise some volume. The chattering died down and they all turned to look up at her.
Despite her injury, Audrey was as full of confidence as ever. ‘Thank you all for coming. I’m pleased to see so many of you here this evening. I know it’s cold, but please listen to what my little friend has to say. Your lives might depend on it.’ Then she turned to Milton and whispered, ‘They’re all yours,’ and lowered herself into the crowd, resting on a bag of compost.
Quivering all over, Milton faced the spiders alone.
‘Hello, my name is . . .’
‘Speak up, buddy!’ came a shout from the seven-legged garden spider. Awkward laughter rippled through the crowd and Milton cringed.
‘Give ’im a chance, he’s just a little midge!’ yelled another. The garden spiders laughed, their bulbous abdomens bouncing.
Milton wished a cat would come along and swallow him up. But then he saw another, even bigger spider moving through the crowd.
Ralph!
Ralph never came outside! He squeezed in next to Audrey and gave Milton a little salute.
It gave Milton the courage he needed. ‘Yes!’ shouted Milton. ‘I am a small spider, so are lots of you. We may be small, but we’re in big danger. How many of you have been forced to leave your homes?’ A murmur went round the group. ‘How many of you are frightened for your lives?’ The murmur got louder, widows began nodding. ‘But do you know why? Why are we being sprayed and squashed and suddenly screamed at?’ There was silence, and the widows looked at each other, shrugging. A few muttered, ‘Humans,’ like that was the usual answer for everything. All eyes turned to Milton, the spiders’ faces filled with expectation.
So he told them his story. All about the newspaper headline and the internet, Zoe and her dad. ‘Your humans simply don’t know you’re harmless. They think you’re these deadly black widows.’
The spiders applauded, some of them with four of their legs, and a warm glow grew in Milton’s insides. Then a spider called out from on top of a gardening glove, ‘So, what do we do?’
‘Yes, tell us what to do, Milton,’ another false widow spider shouted.
‘That’s why you’re here. We need to come up with a plan, together. I suggest you form small focus groups, maybe four of five spiders. Then, once in your groups, choose a spokes-spider who will feed back to me.’
The widows in the crowd looked baffled.
A small widow spoke up. ‘What’s a focus group?’
Milton glanced at Audrey, concern flashing across his face. ‘Don’t worry, look, this side of the room shuffle over to the right . . . no, the other right. That’s it. Widows in the middle, stay there, widows on the left, shuffle over . . . that’s it! You’ve got it.’ Milton clapped his claws together. ‘OK, so in your groups, try and come up with some suggestions for moving forward. How do we fight back? How do we tell the humans we’re harmless?’
The spiders looked around at one another in their groups.
‘Tell them?’ a spider in the left group said in disbelief.
‘What did he say, dear?’ an elderly cellar spider at the front asked his friend. ‘Did he say speak to a house human? My hearing isn’t what it was. He didn’t say speak to a house human, did he?’
‘No, of course not, Arthur, don’t be silly.’ Arthur�
�s friend turned to Milton. ‘What do you mean, tell them?’
Milton looked at Audrey, who was biting her claws. ‘Well, er, maybe leave a note?’ he said.
Many of the spiders laughed, thinking Milton was joking.
‘I’m not going anywhere near my humans. Used to be we got a rolled-up magazine and a good thwack, but now we’ve got this BugKILL! to contend with. We agreed to come tonight because we heard you could help us. We should be talking about where to go, how to last the winter, not this human stuff. Internet and such like. It’s not for us.’ Murmurs of agreement followed and the seven-legged garden spider started wolf-whistling.
Ralph shouted at her, ‘Hey, One Short! Not the time, shush!’
‘But there isn’t anywhere to go,’ cried Milton over the noise. ‘The story is everywhere. Our entire species is in peril. We have to work together, support each other. We must fight back to get you home.’
‘My human will splat me on sight,’ called a widow at the back.
‘We don’t have a special human like you, Milton,’ another widow called desperately.
‘Yeah, we’re not all human lovers, little midge,’ a garden spider shouted.
‘Go back to your human, puny house spider!’ called another. Now, most of the false widows were looking at the GS gang instead of Milton.
‘He’s not one of you.’ The biggest GS poked a leg at him from on top of Zoe’s Super Soaker. ‘He’s a pampered little human lover. We’ve already told you, we’ll help you – for a price.’
One Short shouted, ‘Let’s all go to Milton’s house! If his humans love spiders so much, we can all live there.’ There was more laughter and Ralph made a zip-it motion with his leg, but too late – the idea caught on.
‘Let’s live at Milton’s house,’ chanted the false widows.
‘Milton’s house! Milton’s house!’ A baby jumping spider bounced up and down and had to be calmed by her mother.
‘NO!’ Milton shouted. ‘You can’t. BugKILL! are coming in a week. It’s not even safe here yet.’
A ripple of fear passed over the gathering.
‘BugKILL!?’
‘Here?’
An elderly false widow at the back fainted and her partner waved a leg angrily at Milton. ‘You never said anything about BugKILL! coming here too. If nothing else, we were told we’d be safe in this shed – this is our refuge.’
Milton bit his jaw.
The angry widow continued. ‘We came from her house, you know. And we barely got out with our lives. A lot of good spiders have died at the hands of Felicity Thrubwell and now you tell us she’s coming here too. Why are we even listening to you?’
The angry false widow made his claw into a little fist and waved it at the crowd. ‘They’ll come to your shed, and your fences. Once she starts spraying, there’s no escape.’
The big GS put a leg around the angry false widow and pointed at Milton. ‘He’s too small to do anything. Come with us and the GS will do what we can to take care of you.’
One by one, they scuttled off, some of them with the garden spiders, all of them grumbling and throwing Milton angry looks.
The last to leave was a young false widow, not yet fully grown, with one more skin to shed. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she said, tears in her eyes as she hurried away.
Audrey climbed back up to the shelf to console him.
‘I don’t understand them,’ Milton said in a small voice. ‘I thought they would’ve at least tried to help themselves.’
‘They’re just not like you.’ Audrey sighed. ‘All they’ve ever known is running and hiding. It’s what little spiders do.’
‘You mean it’s what I should do?’
Ralph joined them. ‘They’ve got no shame, those garden spiders, trying to profit from a crisis.’
‘The garden spiders get everywhere,’ said Milton. ‘I know that. I should’ve been more convincing, I’ve let them down.’
‘No, you haven’t. They’re not your responsibility. Come on back to the house.’ She tugged Milton’s front leg, but he didn’t budge. Audrey gave him her especially cross look – saved for special occasions. ‘You can’t save the world if you’re just another squashed spider. You need to think about yourself. Indoors, now.’
So that was it, then. Milton had failed. He hadn’t saved the neighbourhood spiders, or his friends. BugKILL! would arrive and that would be the end of it. Without saying a word, he nodded to Audrey and they walked back to the house in silence, squeezing under the gap in the back door. Ralph shivered, and headed straight for the radiators, which clicked as they cooled. As Audrey rubbed Ralph’s legs to warm him up, Milton stared out into the garden, watching the leaves blow, and as a light rain began to fall, he felt smaller than ever.
Saturday morning, and Milton was hiding in the bookshelf. He knew his friends wanted to comfort him, but he needed to be alone. His abdomen burnt with humiliation. Or was it too much ladybird juice? He burped and tucked himself in for a sleep, and as he dropped off he thought of his dad.
Milton’s dad had been a famous adventurer. It was where Milton first got the bug. From the moment they met, Dad had said he felt in his spinnerets that his son was different.
Milton’s dad was hunting aphids on a rose bush, the day Milton hatched into a spiderling. He and his siblings crawled out from under their silk blanket, stretched their tiny legs and marched off together to find a high spot to head out from, to start new lives on their own. They all climbed to the top of the tallest blades of grass in the garden, little brown dots on green, like splashes of mud. All except Milton, that is. He climbed to the top of a blue plastic spade stuck in the flower bed – ‘because it looked interesting’. All the spiderlings waggled their bottoms in the air and waited for the breeze to catch their very first silk threads. As the wind tugged, the silk got longer and the spiderlings floated off, ballooning their way to a new home. Milton ballooned all the way to the rose bush, got caught on a thorn and swung upside down in the wind like a tiny pendulum. Milton’s dad untangled him, took one look at this chip off the old block and whisked him home to teach him everything he knew.
He taught Milton to think and ask questions, to be curious and explore – to really live! They did everything together, like best friends. And then at the end, Dad had taken all that wisdom back – just like that, as he was snatched away by the supermarket delivery driver.
Milton looked out over the dining room to the kitchen, to where it had all happened and let a tiny tear drop all the way to the floor.
After tea, Zoe got her books laid out ready. ‘I’m going to break you in gently, OK?’ she said, as Dad sat beside her, looking fearfully at the assortment of bug books. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll start small and cute. The smallest spider in the world lives in Samoa and is 0.4mm in size. Are you scared of that one?’
‘Ha! I doubt I’d even see it.’ Dad laughed, waggling his glasses.
‘So it’s size you’re worried about?’
At the mention of size, Milton peered out from his hiding place.
‘Mmm, and the poisonous thing.’
‘Well, they’re not poisonous, for a start. A poison is something you ingest, so unless you’re going to start eating spi—’ Zoe stopped as her dad looked like he might be sick. ‘Never mind. Anyway, they’re venomous, not poisonous. Spiders need their venom, so they can paralyse their prey, before they wrap it in silk. But in the UK there aren’t any spiders venomous enough to cause serious harm to people. If you were to get bitten it might feel like a bee or wasp sting – probably not even that bad. You’re not scared of bees, are you?’
Mr Macey smiled. The sparkle had returned to Zoe’s eyes, and he was relieved, even if it did mean he had to look at pictures of creepy-crawlies.
Up on the shelf, Milton was also cheered a little – Mr M was making progress, but it wouldn’t be enough, as long as Felicity Thrub-well carried on spreading her poison. There was a pit in his stomach, and not the sort that could be filled by eve
n the fattest woodlouse.
If only Zoe could teach all humans about us, not just her dad.
He thought of the headline again – it still made his tummy flip, remembering ‘KILLER SPIDERS’ but now he felt more sad than scared. Why did humans hate spiders so much? What had they ever done but eat flies and mosquitoes? He felt flat, like the Brazilian wandering spider. Now there was a spider to scream at. Big and scary and properly venomous. Milton wanted to shout, ‘Go and scream at him and leave me alone!’ He stamped his leg down hard on the shelf but he couldn’t even make the dust tremble. He just stubbed his claw.
At the table, Zoe was showing Mr Macey a picture of a Hawaiian happy-face spider, and her dad was actually laughing. ‘These spiders are endangered and there’s a big campaign to save them. I mean, even you would want to help this little guy, right?’
Zoe was reluctant to break the good vibes but it was time to get real and deal with ‘deadly’. ‘Dad,’ Zoe bit her lip, ‘do you want to see a deadly spider now? It’s not a big one.’
‘Sure,’ said her dad, pretending to be cool.
Zoe opened her book to the page she’d tagged with a red Post-it. ‘This is a redback – a type of widow, native to Australia. Only the female bite is dangerous.’
‘They look a lot like the spider in the news.’
‘They’re related.’
Milton snapped open his eyes.
More relatives?
‘In fact, I’m pretty sure this is why people are being so hysterical about that news story. I think that Thrubwell woman is trying to convince the world that the false widows are like these guys, but they’re not.’ Zoe looked at her dad seriously. ‘I know she’s our neighbour, but I think she’s trying to make money by scaring people.’
Mr Macey ignored Zoe’s comments about Felicity. ‘And how many people are killed by these redbacks?’
Zoe’s shoulders dropped. ‘Well, none, actually. In 1956, an anti-venom was created and no one has died from a redback bite in Australia since then.’
