Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — Spare the Spider. [ARTICLE]

Spare the Spider.

Is it not enough that every bird that flies ruthlessly robs her nursery, devours her babies, and even snatches her own soft body from the very sanctum of home; that gauzy flies steal their greedy young into her nursery to fatten upon her infants; that to monkeys, squirrels and lizards her plump body is a sweet morsel- they never resist; that frogs and toads snap her up without ceremony; that centipedes seize her in relentless grasp; that wasps paralyze and bury her alive? writes Oliver Thorne Miller in Popular Science Monthly. Are not these enough, without man joining the host of exterminators? Man, too, in whose service she lives! Consider for a moment her usefulness. Count, if you can the thousands of flies and mosquitoes eaten by one common house or garden spider in a summer, then remember her harmlessness. Other servants we must pay. Birds eat our cut-worms, our caterpillars, and our potato-beetles, but we have to pay a tax—small, it is true, In fruits, in berries, ip green peas, in corn; owls and hawks, while they destroy moles and mice, indulge, now and then in chickens. But the daughter of Arachne asks no reward, neither fruit nor vegetable suffers from her touch, no humming or buzzing attends her movements. Steadily, faithfully she goes on her way, doing her appointed work; and we, so wise, so far above her in the scale of being, we—murder her!