Sophie Spider is the first friend the Grub Twins meet. She is calm and gentle and loves making new friends. She likes to build her web between lettuces, but she doesn’t want to catch her friends in her web, so she lets them go over or under her web to get to the other side.

Sammie Spider is Sophie Spider’s cousin, but he is not calm like her. He can’t keep still and he moves very quickly. He seems to be everywhere at once, because he’s adventurous and wants to know what’s going on. So he scuttles back and forth and in and out of the vegetables, looking for some fun.

Sophie and Sammie live among the cabbages and lettuces in Vegetable Row.

The Spider

A spider makes silk threads, which it uses to weave a web. The spider starts by fixing a thread to an object, like a branch of a tree or the corner of a room. Then it starts to build its web.

The spider moves back and forth across the web, producing more silk threads and creating a pattern with them. The threads are sticky, so insects and flies get caught in them and they become the spider’s food.

The silk threads are very strong like elastic. In times gone by, spider’s silk was used to stop wounds from bleeding and to make fishing lines and nets.

An abandoned spider’s web is a called a cobweb. It means that the spider has left and is not coming back.

A spider is not really an insect. It is an arachnid. Arachnids have two main body sections, eight legs, simple eyes (which don’t see very well), no antenna and no wings, and they lay eggs to reproduce more spiders.

Spiders help to keep our homes and gardens free from pest insects and bugs that eat the plants. If you see a spider in the house, you can be sure that your house will be free of bugs.

Copyright © 2024 Brenda Martin & Claire Martin Luxton. All rights reserved.