The Myth of Wile E

The Old Spider and the Sea

"He was a little spider who hunted alone in a web in my toilet and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a bug."

There was a faint glow coming from my bathroom, which was odd because I was pretty sure I'd left the zucchini light unplugged to conserve the zucchini battery. And also, because the zucchini light did not work.

The light was coming from inside the toilet bowl-a sputtering greenish yellow, as if a little sorcerer were casting magic spells in there. For a second I wondered if the spider had become so desperate to catch some food that he was resorting to supernatural means.

Then I looked closer, and saw that the web was in tatters.

Clearly there had been an epic struggle, like a fisherman wrestling with a giant fish. In the middle of the wrecked web was a firefly, wrapped up as haphazardly as a mummy during a bandage shortage. The silk shroud was thin enough to be almost transparent.

The firefly's light stopped flickering. It was stuck "on," and fading. I wondered how long it had flashed S-O-S, S-O-S, before finally giving up the ghost.

The spider rested on the other side of the web, (eye)3ing his catch. He looked a little overwhelmed, if you asked me. Maybe even a bit shaken by the dramatic encounter.

I came back every few hours and nothing had changed, except that the firefly's light was fainter and fainter, like an old TV set that had been shut off. But still the spider would not eat the firefly. It just wouldn't.

I couldn't understand it. "Isn't this the break you've been waiting for?" I told the spider. It looked at me skeptically. I thought: Maybe the spider had gone so long without eating, it had forgotten how.

After consulting Those Astounding Arachnids!, it all made sense. Apparently, some kinds of fireflies were as toxic as a miniature Superfund site, and even a spider who's starving to death won't eat them. Well, being poisonous hadn't done the firefly much good, I guess, although it did die without giving the poor spider the satisfaction of a decent meal.

The spider kept his inedible trophy for a while, like the marlin skeleton in that Hemingway story about the old fisherman.

Then, at last, he cut the bundle loose, and the little mummified firefly dropped into the toilet water.

The spider went to sleep dreaming of antlions.