Douglas the spider contemplated his dinner nervously. He’d never seen anything quite like this before.
‘Excuse me, but what are you?’ he enquired.
‘Poisonous?’ said the creature, hopefully. It’s response was somewhat muffled, but that was to be expected in the circumstances.
Douglas sniffed the bundle. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, though memories of the red beetle last week hovered uncomfortably in his stomach.
‘Worth more alive than dead?’ the creature tried again. ‘With a bounty on my head, if only you deliver me safely to the Bay Tree in the front garden?’
‘Don’t be a smartarse,’ said Douglas. His stomach growled with hunger. Aphids were not enough.
‘An asset to your company?’ continued the creature, desperation creeping into its tone. ‘Your new valet? Or perhaps I could act as a, I don’t know, an Introducer. I could get your favourite insects over, offer them a free drink or something …’
Douglas considered the proposition. ‘I have always,’ he said, ‘dreamt of opening a bar.’
‘Oh yes,’ said the insect, twisting slightly in the web to uncover its mouth. ‘I could see that. Me in charge of the punters and publicity, you could organise the drinks and entertainment …’
‘I do have some small singing talent,’ murmured Douglas, modestly.
‘Dew drops on every strand, dancing moths, and you in the middle, singing your heart out. Plus, of course, rich pickings for dinner at the end of every evening.’
Douglas sighed happily. It sounded perfect.
He bit the head off his new friend.
‘A spider must eat,’ he said, regretfully, as he chewed his way through the strange insect’s carapace. ‘But he can also dream.’
And dream he did, as it turned out his dinner was quite right, it was poisonous and caused a bout of indigestion that left Douglas quite out of sorts for the rest of the week.
Just waving 