Spider bites one, gets one free
2004-02-24 23:05
Charles Smith
Bloemfontein - Another brown button spider has struck in the Free State: this time, she caught a snake, and got a lizard free.
While the snake was helplessly caught in the web, the spider was devouring the lizard that the Aurora house snake had been eating when she bit him.
The spider caught the snake shortly after 15:00 on a smallholding near Bloemfontein on Monday, barely two weeks after another brown button spider caught a similar snake in the city.
Marie-Louise Tait said she noticed the snake with the lizard in its mouth in the spider's web on Monday.
The web had been in the storage room where she manufactured candles for some time, she said.
By Monday night, the snake seemed dead, but still had its tail twirled around a pole.
On Tuesday, the reptile tried to free itself with renewed energy.
The spider, meanwhile, unconcernedly snacked on the lizard.
By late afternoon, all that was left of the lizard was a ball of fuzz.
Mike Bates of the herpetology department of the National Museum said an Aurora house snake was able to swallow a lizard four times the size of the one in Tait's storage room.
He said when a snake was stressed it usually regurgitated its prey, which might have been the case in this instance.
The first button spider and the snake she devoured were both taken to the museum where they would be on display.
- Volksblad