Page 78 - English_Spark_5

The hunting wasps searched out caterpillars and spiders; the spiders hunted

for flies; the dragonflies fed off the spiders and the flies; and the swift, multi-

coloured wall lizards fed off everything.

But my favourites were the shyest members of the wall community who did not

seek any attention. They were also the most dangerous; you hardly ever saw one

unless you looked for it, and yet there must have been several hundred living in
the cracks of the wall. If you gently lifted a piece of the loose plaster away from

the brick, there, crouching beneath it, would be a little black scorpion, an inch

long, looking as though he were made out of polished chocolate.

They were weird-looking things, with their flattened, oval bodies, their neat,
crooked legs, the enormous crab-like claws, bulbous and neatly jointed as

armour, and the tail like a string of brown beads ending in a sting like a rose-

thorn. The scorpion would lie there quite quietly as you examined him only
raising his tail as a warning sign if you breathed too hard on him.

Then one day I found a fat female scorpion in the wall, wearing what at first

glance appeared to be a pale fawn fur coat. Closer inspection proved that this

strange garment was made up of a mass of tiny babies clinging to the mother's
back. I was enraptured by this family, and I made up my mind to smuggle them

into the house and up to my bedroom so that I might keep them and watch them

grow up. With infinite care I moved the mother and family into a matchbox, and
then hurried to the villa.

It was rather unfortunate that just as I entered the door lunch should be

served. However, I placed the matchbox carefully on the mantelpiece in the
drawing room and made my way to the dining room and joined the family for

the meal. Dawdling over my food, feeding Roger surreptitiously under the table

and listening to the family arguing, I completely forgot about my exciting new

captures.

enraptured — extremely pleased by; dawdling — being slow; surreptitiously —
secretively

78 English-5