Charter 14 Good Progress
Far into the night,while the otehr creatures slept, Charlotte worked on her web.
First she ripped out a few of the orb lines near the center.
She left the radial lines alone, as they were needed for support.
As she worked, her eight legs were a great help to her.
So were her teeth.
She loved to weave and she was an expert a tit.
A spide can produce several kinds of thread.
She used a dry, tough thread for foundation lines,
and she uses a sticky thread for snare lines
-the ones that catch and hold insects.
Charlotte decided to use her dry thread for writing the new message.
"If I write the word 'Terific' with sticky thread," she thought,
"every bug that comes along will get stuck in it and spoil the effect."
"Now let's see, the first letter is T."
Charlotte climbed to a point at the top of the left hand side of the web.
Swinging her spinnerets into position, she attached her thread and then dropped down.
As she dropped, her spinnig tubes went into action and she left out thread.
At the bottom, she attached the thread.
This formed the upright part of the letter T.
Charlotte was not satisfied, however.
She climbed up and made another attachment, right next to the first.
Then she carried the line down, so that she had a double line instead of a single line.
"It will show up better if I make she whole thing with double lines."
She climbed back up, moved over about an inch to the left, touched her spinnerets to the web,
and then carried a line across to the right, forming the top a of the T.
She repeated this, makeing it double.
Her eight legs were very busy helping.
