Of Men and Spiders

Alice watched as Scott carefully unraveled one of the cloth strips he'd used as a backpack to get all their food and supplies to their new campground. She'd offered to help, but Scott stopped her, "This is delicate work. I needed the strings in near perfect condition."

Instead, Alice could only play with some sticks and stones while he worked. So she was drawing patterns in the dirt and framing them with small rocks she'd found lying about. Meanwhile, Scott was taking the thin strings he'd unraveled and was tying most of them around a stick he placed in the odd tent he'd made out of sticks and leaves.

Peaking around Scott, Alice could see him put the stick full of strings back in a corner while wrapping a few extra strands around his wrist. Her brow furrowed. "What are those for?"

Scott looked back and smiled. "I'm going to set a trap for some small animals. The less we eat the survival rations, the better. We'll never know when we'll need those in an emergency!"

Alice's brow furrowed. Did her brother mean they were going to eat small animals? "That sounds yucky!"

Scott smiled, but Alice could see some sadness in the smile as he rumpled her hair. "Maybe so, munchkin, but we don't know how long we're going to be out here all alone, so we might have to eat some yucky stuff. Just promise me that once I figure out if it's safe, you'll try and eat it, even if it is yucky!"

Alice didn't like eating yucky stuff, but she knew Scott was doing his best, so she nodded. "I promise!"

Scott's smile widened, and some sadness left his face, so Alice knew she'd said the right thing. Even his voice sounded happier when he spoke. "Alright! Well, now I gotta go set the traps up, but I don't want to leave you alone, so you're coming with me! Just try to keep quiet. We don't want to spook the nearby animals too much, okay?"

Alice beamed back at her brother. "Okay!"

-

She's main body was exhausted after laying so many eggs. She'd need more nourishment soon. She's hands were quite effective at killing whatever they caught, but so many of the creatures native to this planet were small and fast enough to avoid them. To counter this, She had added some changes to her new hands. This batch would be smaller, stealthier, and faster. This would also have the benefit of these hands not requiring as much energy to function, meaning a more significant share of their catches could be set aside for She's main body.

But that was of no help right now. She'd need nourishment long before her next set of hands would be ready. Perhaps, her tool users could be of assistance. She turned a more significant portion of her attention to them.

They were walking through the forest right now, and the larger female looked around as though on the hunt for something. Excellent, perhaps she was on the hunt! However, She's hopes were soon dashed as the female stopped and approached another sapling. It looked like the female was only looking for more building material. She switched a portion of her attention back to her hunting eyes and hands, keeping only a single eye in place to watch the tool users.

After bending the sapling over a few times, the female seemed to give up. Most likely, the wood wasn't dry enough like most of the sticks she'd used to build her home. She was a little disappointed that the tool user hadn't recognized that fact at a glance; perhaps they weren't as intelligent as She'd been starting to suspect.

Instead, the tool user looked around until it found another stick. This one was far smaller than the ones the tool user had been interested in before now, barely an arm segment in length. The female then fiddled with the end of the stick in a way She couldn't make out through her lone eye before grabbing another shorter and thicker stick and using the new stick to pound the first one into the ground, almost all the way so only a little nub stuck above the ground. Then the female found another, much smaller stick, smaller than even one of its fingers, and fiddled with it some more.

That was curious, but what the tool user did next was more so. It reached up to the young tree it had been interested in, took a length of some fibrous material and tied it to the sapling, then attached the smaller stick it had found near the end of the fiber. Then she bent the sapling over, toward the ground, took the stick at the end of the fiber, carefully placed it against the stick it had pounded into the ground, and then grabbed one last stick near at hand to put under the tiniest bit of wood, and carefully stepped back. Amazingly, the sampling stayed bent over, with incredible tension, ready to pull up if anything was disturbed. Then, the female took another fiber length and bent close to her sticks in the ground. She couldn't see what was being done at this point, but when the tool user stood up again, a loose fiber loop was lying on the ground right in front of the whole setup.

She desperately wanted to get a closer look to see how the tool user had maintained this tension and brought over a second eye to examine the setup while the first followed her tool users as they moved on.

Once her eye got close enough, She could see how the whole thing worked. The tool user had carved a notch in the stick it had pounded into the ground, flattened the smaller stick that sat inside the notch and rested on the last stick, which had also been placed in the ground. The whole setup was designed so that if even a slight amount of force was applied, the delicate balance of sticks would fall apart, and the sapling would lurch upward to its original position. And to top it all off, a small amount of the inside of one of those scentless nuts was placed onto the end of the last stick as bait to tempt an animal to do just that, getting itself trapped in the fiber loop hanging a little way off the ground.

It was ingenious, far more complex than any instinct driven creature should be capable of creating. This was clearly an advanced level of problem-solving that required abstract thinking. This was unheard of! In all her travels, She had never encountered another being capable of this level of complexity other than another She. Her tool users were sapient! Admittedly, stick and fiber traps were far from what a She was capable of, but this still warranted much more study.

Through her eye, She could see the tool users setting up more of the same trap as it wandered around the forest, and She wondered if this was a short-term solution to her own problem. Just how effective were these traps? Unwilling to wait around too long, She decided to use some of her nearby hands to "encourage" some of the smaller local wildlife to move closer to the traps. The trick was to not chase the wildlife too hard, so it thought it was just meandering that way as a precaution rather than running from a threat.

It took some time. But sure enough, eventually, one of the animals noticed the scent of the bait and approached the trap. It circled the trap, looking both within and without for some danger, but each circle took it closer to the bait. Eventually, it cautiously stepped closer and took a cautious lick of the bait. When nothing happened, it eased its guard and started eating. She watched as the stick the bait was on shook just slightly as the animal fed, then quicker than her eye could process, the intricate stick setup fell apart, and the sapling launched back into place, with the fibrous loop tightening around the animal's leg and hanging it suspended in the air.

The trap worked! She immediately sent some of her hands to replicate the trap near her hunting grounds, using whatever materials She had available while contemplating the more significant implications of what she'd discovered today...

-

When Scott made another round, checking his traps, he was amazed to learn every single one had caught an animal of some sort. Lizards, mammals, and something a little harder to categorize. He would have been happy with one or two catches! Though this presented a new problem, it would be difficult to test these all to ensure they were safe to eat before the meat went bad. Still, that was an excellent problem to have.

At the sound of some skittering in the tree behind him, Scott dropped his latest catch and picked up his spear. He'd been hearing these sounds for a while now, and he was getting more and more confident it wasn't just his imagination. It felt like something was following him, and he didn't particularly like that idea.

When no threat presented itself, Scott eventually eased up, slinging his catches over his shoulder so he could safely grip the spear in his dominant hand before turning to Alice. "Come on, munchkin. We're heading back."

As they walked away, Scott could swear he could still hear the soft sound of scuttling in the trees behind him.