. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. 820 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE. INTO TRAPDOOR TUBES HIS FLASHLIGHT SHOOTS A RAY OF HOPE A Cyrtid fly pupa? A wasp cocoon? Or only a blank? The author's gambling thrill comes when he checks in the day's "bag" of spider homes. Once he drew 74 successive blanks—and then found an Ocnaea smithi pupa in number 73. When he peeped into an unopened tube, just for this photograph, he found—believe it or not—a tine wasp cocoon in the first of 225 nests collected this year! and slipped through (page 812). Like a bhie-black
. [Articles about birds from National geographic magazine]. Birds. 820 THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE. INTO TRAPDOOR TUBES HIS FLASHLIGHT SHOOTS A RAY OF HOPE A Cyrtid fly pupa? A wasp cocoon? Or only a blank? The author's gambling thrill comes when he checks in the day's "bag" of spider homes. Once he drew 74 successive blanks—and then found an Ocnaea smithi pupa in number 73. When he peeped into an unopened tube, just for this photograph, he found—believe it or not—a tine wasp cocoon in the first of 225 nests collected this year! and slipped through (page 812). Like a bhie-black bullet she flashed down the tube and struck the waiting spider (page 813). The rough-and-tumble fight that followed was too fast for the eye to follow or for the camera to catch. The spider outweighed the wasp fully ten to one. Psammy almost disappeared in the hugging clutch of the eight powerful legs. The spider's needle-pointed fangs struck at her again and again. You would have bet a hundred to one on the spider, and 1 would have agreed with you. But, not so fast! The wicked-looking fangs were only glancing harmlessly off Psammy's steel-like armor plates, while her facile abdomen, as pliant and powerful as a swordsman's wrist, was working busily within that fierce embrace, jabbing again and again with her daggerlike sting as she sought an opening in the spider's armor. Such a battle lacks the spectacular quali- ties of a duel between expert swordsmen. It is more like a rough-and-tumble fight between a giant and an adroit dwarf— where the dwarf has a poisoned dagger up his sleeve. We might not even see the dagger, but its effect upon the giant will tell us when it finds its mark. And so it was in this battle. Suddenly the action slowed down. The big spider wilted into a limp parahsis. Psammy's sting had found its mark. \>ry calmly she relaxed the bulldog grip of her mandibles and disentangled herself. \\'hen she stepped clear she never once glanced back. She did no
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