"Charlotte A.
Cavatica. But just call me Charlotte.""I think you're
beautiful," said Wilbur.
"Well, I am
pretty," replied Charlotte. "There's no denying that. Almost all
spiders are rather nice-looking. I'm not as flashy as some, but I'll do. I wish
I could see you, Wilbur, as clearly as you can see me.""Why can't
you?" asked the pig. "I'm right here."鈥淵es,
but I'm near-sighted," replied Charlotte. "I've always been
dreadfully near-sighted. It's good in some ways, not so good in others. Watch
me wrap up this fly."A fly that had been crawling along Wilbur's trough
had flown up and blundered into the lower part of Charlotte's web and was
tangled in the sticky threads. The fly was beating its wings furiously, trying
to break loose and free itself.
"First,"
said Charlotte, " I dive at him." She plunged headfirst toward the
fly. As she dropped, a tiny silken thread unwound from her rear end.
"Next, I wrap
him up." She grabbed the fly, threw a few jets of silk around it, and
rolled it over and over, wrapping it so that it couldn't move. Wilbur watched
in horror. He could hardly believe what he was seeing, and although he detested
flies, he was sorry for this one.
"There!"
said Charlotte. "Now I knock him out, so he'll be more comfortable."
She bit the fly. "He can't feel a thing now," she remarked.
"He'll make a perfect breakfast for me.""You mean you eat
flies?" gasped Wilbur.
"Certainly.
Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty
cockroaches, gnats, midges, daddy longlegs, centipedes, mosquitoes,
crickets--anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to
live, don't I?""Why, yes, of course," said Wilbur. "Do they
taste good?""Delicious. Of course, I don't really eat them. I drink
them--drink their blood. I love blood," said Charlotte, and her pleasant,
thin voice grew even thinner and more pleasant.
"Don't say
that!" groaned Wilbur. "Please don't say things like
that!""Why not ? It's true, and I have to say what is true. I am not
entirely happy about my diet of flies and bugs, but it's the way I'm made. A
spider has to pick up a living somehow or other, and I happen to be a trapper.
I just naturally build a web and trap flies and other insects. My mother was a
trapper before me. Her mother was a trapper before her. All our family have
been trappers. Way back for thousands and thousands of years we spiders have
been laying for flies and bugs.""It's a miserable inheritance,"
said Wilbur, gloomily. He was sad because his new friend was so bloodthirsty.
"Yes, it
is," agreed charlotte. "But I can't help it. I don't know how the
first spider in the early days of the world happened to think up this fancy
idea of spinning a web, but she did, and it was clever of her, too. And since
then, all of us spiders have had to work the same trick. It's not a bad pitch,
on the whole.""It's cruel," replied Wilbur, who did not intend to
be argued out of his position.
"Well, you can't
talk," said Charlotte. "You have your meals brought to you in a pail.
Nobody feeds me. I have to get my own living. I live by my wits. I have to be
sharp and clever, lest I go hungry. I have to think things out, catch what I
can, take what comes. Ant it just so happens, my friend, that what comes is
flies and insects and bugs. And furthermore," said Charlotte, shaking one
of her legs, "do you realize that if I didn't catch bugs and eat them,
bugs would increase and multiply and get so numerous that they'd destroy the
earth, wipe out everything?""Really?" said Wilbur. "I
wouldn't want that to happen. Perhaps your web is a good thing after
all."The goose had been listening to this conversation and chuckling to
herself. "There are a lot of things Wilbur doesn't know about life,"
she thought. "He's really a very innocent little pig. He doesn't even know
what's going to happen to him around Christmastime; he has no idea that Mr.
Zuckerman and Lurvy are plotting to kill him." And the goose raised
herself a bit and poked her eggs a little further under her so that they would
receive the full heat from her warm body and soft feathers.
Charlotte stood
quietly over the fly, preparing to eat it. Wilbur lay down and closed his eyes.
He was tired from his wakeful night and from the excitement of meeting someone
for the first time. A breeze brought him the smell of clover--the
sweet-smelling world beyond his fence. "Well," he thought," I've
got a new friend, all right. But what a gamble friendship is! Charlotte is
fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty--everything I don't like. How can I
learn to like her, even though she is pretty and, of course, clever?
Wilbur was merely
suffering the doubts and fears that often go with finding a new friend. In good
time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her
rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove
loyal and true to the very end.