“Step Into My Parlor,” Said the Spider to the Snake.

Pete the snake and the unnamed spider [arrow] that captured him.

That bastion of modern forteana, The Daily Mail has done it again with an Australian smackdown between the Eastern Brown, one of the world’s most venomous snakes and the toxic Redback Spider.

It looks impossible. It looks faked. It looks, in short, like a typical Daily Mail exclusive. However, there are historical precedents. Pliny speaks of the natural enmity between the creatures and of how a spider will pierce a snake’s brain with its fangs and then wrap it up in its web. [Pliny, Natural History, Chapter X.]  Lyman Beecher and New York State Entomologist, Dr. Asa Finch, also told of epic battles in the 1830s between tiny spiders and their much larger opponents (from Batavia and Havana, New York, respectively), which could scarcely be credited. Surviving illustrations seem very like that in the Daily Mail.

A sketch of the Batavia, NY snake. There was another shelf a few inches below the snake, which is not pictured.

Old stuff, you scoff. Early naturalists are not always accurate and those snakes might have accidentally fallen into the webs. All tosh!

I simply refer sceptics to a story from a century later. The first notices of this battle only appeared after the snake had been in its silken bonds for over three weeks. I’m afraid Mayor Langum made his partisan sympathies quite clear.

 Snake, Spider Battle 24 Days; Spider Is Made 2-to-1 Favorite

St. Charles, Ill., Sept. 14 The odds were two to one in favor of the spider over the snake Wednesday night in their battle to the death. The snake is caught in the spider’s web.

But the snake—ten inches long and of the garden variety—was battling as gamely as ever. Its tail threshed violently, its forked tongue speared viciously, but the spider swung lithely about its web, repairing damage and weaving the net more strongly.

For twenty-four days the insect and the reptile have battled. Crowds of the curious visited Wednesday the city-owned brick shack where the snake entered through a drain pipe.

“I’m betting on the spider,” said Mayor I.G. Langum, who has decreed the fight shall be to the death. “Brains will win in the end and that spider has brains.

As custodian of the keys to the brick shack, Mayor Langum allowed all who wished to enter and view the spectacle.

On the floor of the battling arena lie several dead spiders, victims of the snake’s lashing tail. A half dozen others spin their webs a few feet away from the battle, but only one little fellow has entered the fray to assist he insect that began the fight. The little one makes minor repairs to the web.

Mayor Langum declared the spiders had killed a larger snake which entered to assist the one ensnared in the web.

“I saw the larger snake trying to help the captured one last Sunday,” the Mayor said. “When I went back Monday, it was dead. The spiders must have killed it. Maybe one of the spiders got in its wind pipe and choked it to death—that’s what I think. Anyway, the snake went in there to eat the spiders. He got fooled, and now he can figure his own way out.” Dallas [TX] Morning News 15 September 1932: p. 1

I expected to see no more about this high-snakes contest, except perhaps a small obituary for the reptile, but no….

Snake Freed By Mayor After Long Fight With Spider

Executive Says Humane Society Intervened.

St. Charles, Ill., Sept. 15. While the frustrated spider looked on—with raging eyes, so many witnesses attested—Mayor I.G. Langum tonight freed the ten-inch garter snake that had been held prisoner in its web for twenty-fives days.

“The affair was assuming international complications,” said Mayor Langum, whose sympathies were all with the spider,” so I decided to put a stop to it.”

About two hundred spectators, members of humane societies, wagerers, reporters and cameramen, crowded into the small pump house to witness termination of the duel.

The snake, whose head had been tightly snared in strands of the web since it invaded the spider’s lair, appeared somewhat exhausted when the mayor snipped its bonds with a pair of scissors.

Nevertheless, it was able to partake of nourishment in the form of milk provided by the chief executive before wriggling off in the grass.

“I’ll admit,” said Mayor Langum, “that it was unfair to the spider, but I was informed by the Humane Educational society that the whole fight was illegal. I don’t know whether it was or not, but I figure that to save argument and prevent the matter from reaching international proportions, it would be wise to intervene.”

Inasmuch as the snake went away under its own power, Mayor Langum said he had no alternative but to give the decision to the spider. Daily Illinois State Journal [Springfield, IL] 16 September 1932: p. 1

The snake not only got a name, it got a new home.

 “Pete,” the Pump House Snake, Gets Home at Zoo, and Diet of Spiders.

St. Charles, Ill., Sept. 16. Pete, the snake which aroused the nation’s sympathy by hanging entrapped for 26 days in a spider’s web, is going onward in fame.

Uncoiling only infrequently to drink greedily from a dish of milk, Pete reposed tonight inside a large glass jar in the window of Everett Fandohl’s meat market. On the jar hung a sign entitled “A Snake’s Prayer for a Day.” It bore these words:

“Oh, Lord, please help me to keep my nose out of other people’s business.”

Mayor I.G. Langum released the snake last night from the web in a city pumping shack, where it had been suspended by the head for nearly a month. Hundreds of persons came from as far as St. Louis to watch the spider spin the snare more tightly, while the snake thumped its tail and writhed frantically for freedom.

“I’d have let them fight it out to the end” said Mayor Langum, “but the Humane society people didn’t think it was right. Pete didn’t have a chance, though. The spider had too much intelligence.”

After a few days in the market window, Mayor Langum said Pete would be taken to the St. Charles Zoo, there to end his days on a diet of flies and spiders which somebody else will have to catch.

As for the spider, it cast aside discouragement in favor of spinning bigger and better webs, preparing for the day when another snake ventures into the pump house. Omaha [NE] World Herald 17 September 1932: p. 18

Happy endings all around, except for the flies and spiders. Does anyone know what ultimately happened to Pete? Died at an advanced age, beloved by all St. Charles children? Murdered by a spider in a ninja suit who broke into the zoo? Answers please to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com who has made her antipathy towards spiders crystal clear in previous posts on spiders in South America, large and scary spiders, and a tarantula horror.

Mayor Langum shows a much more sympathetic character in this entry about his gravesite.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.