Word: spider
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...tried the smaller (477½ ft.) Second Pyramid whose apex still retains much of its original smooth alabaster sheathing. Hoisting himself confidently from one 4-ft. block to the next Alpinist Herron reached the top, stood up and waved to his friends. Then, somehow, he slipped. A sprawling black spider to the horrified eyes below, his body slithered off the alabaster cap, bounced down the huge jagged granite steps to land crushed and dead at the base...
Gradually the townspeople of St. Charles learned of the struggle going on in the pumphouse, began dropping in to watch. Within a week bets were being laid, with the snake a heavy favorite. Then the watchers noticed a curious thing. The spider, always working out of the snake's reach, was pulling the web tighter and, fraction by fraction of an inch, the snake was being lifted from the floor...
...weeks after the struggle began Mayor I. O. Langum had to issue a municipal order that no one might disturb the combatants. Wiggling desperately, the snake tore the web again & again, but each torn strand clung to it and held it more tightly. Spinning with cold-blooded persistence, the spider lifted the snake higher & higher...
...news spread. Newshawks, cameramen and scientists went out to St. Charles from Chicago. Manhattan newspapers found the story good enough for Page 1. A group of arachnidologists, interested in the tensile strength of spider silk, visited St. Charles's pumphouse, opined that the spider would win. Examination showed them that the spider was a male, which is usually devoured by the female after mating. As the struggle dragged into the end of its third week odds shifted again. Spider mating season was approaching...
...Pittsburgh last week, a householder discovered a six-in. garter snake trapped in a spider web. The snake dangled helplessly while the spider skipped up and down his rope, biting at his opponent viciously. After two days the duel ended. The snake was dead. In Burlingame, Calif., a snake and a spider lived together in a bottle at police headquarters without hostility...