Felix Takes the Stage (5 page)

A
nd it was said that my four-times-squared great-grandmother, Old Number Sixteen as we called her, occupied the cabin of John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony, and — listen to this, dear — was present at the signing of the Mayflower Compact!”

“Oh, Oliphant! I never tire of this story.”

“Well, guess what? We do!” Jo Bell muttered.

It was their second night in the store. The good news was that the owner had not yet shown up, so Edith felt sure that Kontiki Antikies was a hobby business for someone. The bad news was that Oliphant Uxbridge loved droning on about his family day and night.

“I wish he'd shut up already. If I have to hear one more story about his stupid
Mayflower
ancestors, I'm going to —” Felix groaned.

“Children, it's time for sleep,” Edith said. But it was hopeless. Despite the fact that they were at the back of the shop and nowhere near the Uxbridges' web, Oliphant's voice carried.

“How can we, Mom, with him droning on?” Jo Bell sighed.

“Get used to it!” called a voice. It was coming from a neighboring ship, a lovely model of the famous clipper
Cutty Sark
.

“Who's that?” Edith called cautiously. She knew there were other spiders about, but no one had spoken to them except the Uxbridges. Their privacy had been respected, or perhaps their presence was dreaded. Still, Edith had been happy to be left alone.

“Doris,” came the reply.

“What are you?”

“Black widow.”

Edith felt a small twinge of relief. At least it was not another orb weaver, and Doris was toxic, too.

“I know what you're thinking!” Doris said in a somewhat unpleasant voice.

“How could you possibly know what I am thinking?” Edith asked.

“I wasn't hatched yesterday, dearie. I've been around your kind.”

Edith did not like her tone at all.
Your kind! How rude!

Doris continued, “Believe me, you are just as toxic as I am.”

“Then you should understand!”

“Ha!” The rigging vibrated with the harsh laugh.

“Mom,” Felix implored. “Why don't you tell her off? Why didn't you say, ‘Hey, Miss Smarty Legs, at least we don't murder our mates and eat them!'”

“Let her be, Felix. Just let her be.”

Edith decided that silence was the best strategy with her new neighbor. She had met too many of Doris's “kind” before. The greater population of black widows was so insecure they had to pick on someone they considered beneath them — usually their mates or a creature more toxic. Edith was always hoping to encounter a black widow pair like the couple she and her husband had met at Tchotchkes Unlimited in Brooklyn. Now, there was a couple of good souls. Albert and Rachel — the two were on their honeymoon as well, and they were determined to buck the current. Rachel point-blank refused to kill her mate. “Tough spinnerets!” she huffed. “This one's a keeper. I'm not letting him go!”

 

When the first gray threads of dawn wove through the darkness of the store, the family was still asleep, except for Felix. The night before, he had noticed a newsstand just outside the shop. He knew the morning edition of the
Los Angeles Times
was delivered very early, and he planned to be on the windowsill to see if there was a story about the philharmonic hall. Like most spiders, Felix's distance vision was not great. The world out there was generally fuzzy, despite his six eyes. But he could see these headlines all too well! Big black block letters seemed to roar:

 

INFESTATION OF DEADLY SPIDERS

IN PHILHARMONIC HALL

Conductor Found Collapsed!

 

Oh, no!
Felix silently groaned. There seemed to be a drawing of a brown recluse on the front page. Beneath it were the words “If you see this spider, contact pest control immediately. Call 1-800-EEK-PEST.”

“I'm wanted!” Felix muttered. He strained to see, but he couldn't read anything else from the windowsill. It was profoundly frustrating. Did the conductor live or die?

Felix returned to the captain's quarters of the USS
Constitution
. His family was still asleep, but try as he might, Felix couldn't join them.

 

Over the next few days, Edith and her children became accustomed to the endless blathering of Oliphant Uxbridge and the pace of life in the antique store. Countless times a day, Felix announced that a molt was coming on. But Edith knew it would be a while and cautioned him to be patient.

Then one morning a week after their arrival, she heard a scuttling in the rigging. Felix swung in on a silk thread through a porthole. “Ta-da!” he announced.

“What's all the ta-da-ing about?” Jo Bell asked as she trussed up a carpenter ant.

Edith looked hard at her son. She took a tiny step closer and focused all of her eyes. Her minuscule heart skipped a beat. “Felix! Your leg! You have a new leg!”

C
ould you keep it down!” The merry little spider family froze. They were gathered around a large cockroach, celebrating Felix's new leg. Through small puncture wounds made by her fangs, Edith had delivered the first stunning doses of her venom. The cockroach was barely stirring now. Each member of Edith's family was preparing to vomit a bit of their own digestive fluids in through the puncture wounds so the guts of the cockroach would liquefy and could be sucked out.

“You know what would taste great with this? Ketchup!”

“Julep, stop already!” Jo Bell rolled her eyes.

Oliphant Uxbridge's complaint cut through the little party. “I say, you've been carousing about this molt and your son's newly grown leg for hours now. I believe our egg sac is showing signs of hatching. I would appreciate it if our spiderlings could hatch into a more refined environment.”

“Just wait until one of them loses a leg. You'd be celebrating, too!” Felix blurted out.

“Felix!” Edith hissed.

“Well, it's true, Mom,” he muttered.

They heard a painful wail from Mrs. Uxbridge. “Oliphant, that family is so vulgar. Don't even speak to them. You know nothing ever good happens when brown recluses move into the neighborhood. Why, I heard sirens out there the very night they arrived. I bet anything it was something to do with
them
. Brown recluses — they give us all a bad name!”

Fear coursed through Edith. Mrs. Uxbridge had made the connection between Edith's family and the sirens. A sense of defeat engulfed her. Fat Cat, however, had heard enough. Arching his back in anger, he sprang across the shop to where the Uxbridges' web hung in all its spiraling delicacy.

“How dare you speak that way to my dear friend! ‘Vulgar,' you call her! My dear madame, you wouldn't know vulgar if it smacked you in the face.” Fat Cat was in full voice now. Edith and her children clambered up the USS
Constitution
's rigging to watch Fat Cat's performance. Scores of other spiders in the shop began creeping out from their webs. A leucauge family appeared from a dented globe. Another black widow emerged from a chronometer. A pholcid descended from a shelf of compasses for a better view. Fatty was thrilled with his arachnid audience and puffed up to deliver his speech.

“You have a tiny mind, fitted with ordinary thoughts and downright meanness! You know nothing except your own dismal little ancestral history,” the cat cried out.

“Here! Here! I take offense,” Oliphant Uxbridge fumed.

“You give offense, sir!” Fat Cat replied.

There was nothing more satisfying for Edith than seeing the pompous spider taken down a notch. It was as delicious as a tasty cockroach. But beneath the fizz and sizzle of the argument, Edith began to detect a dimmer set of vibrations. What were they? From one of her six eyes she noticed a glistening thread floating softly toward where she perched in the rigging.

My goodness — a courtship thread! Oh, I'm much too old. A widow with three kids.
Then it struck her. The single word formed in her mind, each letter dropping slowly into place. M-I-M-E-T-I-D-A-E — pirate spiders!

It was an attack.

“NO!” she screamed. “Abandon ship!”

The pirate spiders used an old ruse. Send out a courtship thread, reel the victim in, and then with one quick bite to the leg, in goes the poison and …

Edith couldn't bear the thought. Felix had just grown a new leg!

Pirates were one of the few spiders Edith knew, aside from black widows, who specialized in killing their own. How cunning they had been in their mimicry of brown recluse vibrations. They had obviously been in the store the entire time. Most likely they had been hiding out on the
Kon-Tiki
raft that hung above the
Constitution
.

“Get out, kids! Get out! Pirates!” Edith yelled.

She could now see the distinctive spinelike hairs that lined the long front legs of the pirate spiders. Four pirates crawled onto the deck and up the rigging after Julep and Jo Bell, who scuttled toward the crow's nest. Felix was on the foredeck.
They'll be trapped!

Edith looked around wildly, but her son had disappeared. “Felix, where are you? Felix!” she screamed.

Fat Cat bounded over, teeth bared.

“Don't get near them!” Edith shouted. “They're almost as toxic as we are!”

Suddenly, there was a glittering flash from the mizzenmast. It was Felix swinging by his fresh new leg. In his forward appendages, his pedipalps, he grasped the miniature cutlasses.

“Felix!” Edith exclaimed.

“Mom, catch this!”

The curved blade sailed toward her on a high quality, number one grade silk thread. It was catch or be killed! But Felix's aim was perfect. Edith caught the cutlass and slashed the so-called “courtship thread.” Felix quickly suspended himself over the nearest pirate. With a quick flick of the cutlass, he separated the spider's head from its body. “Bye-bye,” he said as the spider's head tumbled to the deck.

The other three spiders were stunned. Then they began to argue.

“He said it would work!”

“He said it always worked!”

Unnoticed by the arguing spiders, Edith scuttled up the ratlines, the small ropes between the shrouds of the mast. She sliced off another pirate head.

“Go, Mom!” Felix yelled.

“No,
they're
going! After them!” she cried.

This attack was definitely planned. Edith realized that the pirates had worked to create a highway of silk toward the front of the store. They were headed that way — straight toward the Uxbridges. Seconds later, there was a shriek from the figurehead. “My babies! My babies!” It was Mrs. Uxbridge.

The two remaining pirate spiders were climbing up the lovely neck of the figurehead toward Mrs. Uxbridge.

“Your wife or the egg sac — what'll it be?”