Battle in a Pumphouse

One day last month Ernest Davis, water department foreman of St. Charles, Ill., saw in the corner of the municipal pump-house a 10-in. garter snake entangled in a spider web. How the snake got in its predicament neither Foreman Davis nor anyone else knew. Next day Foreman Davis looked to see if the snake was still there. It was. With threshing tail it had ripped the web to shreds, but several strands still held its head fast. The spider, warily keeping to the upper part of the web, was busily spinning fresh strands to strengthen its net.

Gradually the townspeople of St. Charles learned of the struggle going on in the pumphouse, began dropping in to watch. Within a week bets were being laid, with the snake a heavy favorite. Then the watchers noticed a curious thing. The spider, always working out of the snake's reach, was pulling the web tighter and, fraction by fraction of an inch, the snake was being lifted from the floor.

Odds on the snake dropped sharply.

Three weeks after the struggle began Mayor I. O. Langum had to issue a municipal order that no one might disturb the combatants. Wiggling desperately, the snake tore the web again & again, but each torn strand clung to it and held it more tightly. Spinning with cold-blooded persistence, the spider lifted the snake higher & higher.

The news spread. Newshawks, cameramen and scientists went out to St. Charles from Chicago. Manhattan newspapers found the story good enough for Page 1. A group of arachnidologists, interested in the tensile strength of spider silk, visited St. Charles's pumphouse, opined that the spider would win. Examination showed them that the spider was a male, which is usually devoured by the female after mating. As the struggle dragged into the end of its third week odds shifted again. Spider mating season was approaching.

From Chicago the Illinois Humane Society dispatched an indignant note to Mayor Langum, threatening prosecution. One night last week Mayor Langum quietly made his way to the pumphouse, unlocked the door. His flashlight glittered on a pair of scissors. The Mayor snipped. Next day St. Charles's garter snake was fed milk in a corner of the pumphouse, later exhibited in a jar in the window of a butcher shop. On the jar was a sign: O LORD. PLEASE HELP ME TO KEEP MY NOSE OUT OF OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS.

In Pittsburgh last week, a householder discovered a six-in. garter snake trapped in a spider web. The snake dangled helplessly while the spider skipped up and down his rope, biting at his opponent viciously. After two days the duel ended. The snake was dead. In Burlingame, Calif., a snake and a spider lived together in a bottle at police headquarters without hostility.

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