National Geographic: The Savage Garden Page #4

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And then built for quick release

the leg pops off.

Special muscles close off the stump.

The tiger beetle, no genius,

hangs on to its prize.

The daddy-longlegs hobbles off.

But at least she's still alive

and kicking.

In the middle of all the mayhem,

beauty still flourished in my garden.

I never could train my vines

Where flowers grow, bees abound.

In a naughty little quid pro quo,

bees handle the flowers' sex life

in exchange for a drizzle of nectar.

The life of a worker bee is measured

in distance not days.

It's like a

frequent-flyer program in reverse:

fly 500 miles, and then you die.

Now, I've been in a "B" movie or two,

so I used to think I had a

way with these critters.

But then came the fateful moment

when I realized that all of the

garden was not under my spell.

One day a bee came up to me

and stopped to pay her respects.

But this cheeky bug

was testing the boundaries.

It was a small infraction,

but it threw me.

If she could question authority,

what else was going

on in my little Eden?

Well, plenty.

I'd only seen

the tip of the iceberg... lettuce.

No creature was safe,

not even the little upstart of a bee.

She was being watched by many eyes.

Eight to be exact.

They all belong to a jumping spider.

It never hurts to have eyes in the

back of your head...

even if they're only good

for seeing movement.

To see what is moving,

the spider must turn to face her prey.

She's caught sight of the bee.

Two large front eyes track the prey.

She can't move her eyes as we do.

But she can swing her retinas back

and forth inside her head.

It's like holding your eyes still

and then trying to look around

by moving your brain.

Don't try this at home!

There:
you can see the eyes lighten

and darken as the spider looks around.

Being among the smartest of spiders,

she doesn't head straight for her prey.

Instead, she approaches deviously.

She's an accomplished stalker.

Like a slasher film victim,

the bee is unaware of danger.

Good luck for the spider:

the bee flies even closer.

The spider creeps up.

The spider is now within range.

Meanwhile, the bee laps up nectar

with her remarkable tongue.

It's long and hairy,

like mine the morning

after a guacamole festival.

The spider must judge

the bee's exact distance.

Just one false move

and the spider will suffer a sting,

lose her meal... and perhaps her life.

The spider definitely

got the jump on the bee.

Poor bee:
she had a good

Earthworms as big as fire hoses.

Bald eagles snatching up

babies from strollers.

Woolly mammoths

taking down a Seven Eleven.

Well, you will not be seeing

anything like that in this film.

But you will be seeing the hard cold

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