Reading Comprehension — The Spider's Bridge

Read two short passages about spiders and their silk and answer ten questions.

Spider Silk

One morning a big grey spider slid down its thread from the ceiling and landed on Mother Ambroisine's shoulder. She screamed, knocked it off and squashed it. "A spider in the morning brings bad luck!" she said.

"That is just a silly old saying," said Uncle Paul. That evening he told the children what spiders really do.

"A spider's web is a net for catching flies, gnats and mosquitoes. If you hate mosquitoes, you should thank the spider!

"Spiders make silk inside their bodies. It comes out of tiny spouts at the end of the body. Each spout is full of little holes, like the spout of a watering can. Each hole lets out a tiny stream that hardens into a thread, and a few of these join together to make one spider thread."

The Spider's Bridge

A garden spider wanted to build its web across a stream. But how could it get to the other side? It cannot swim, and it would drown if it tried.

"Put your heads together, children," said Uncle Paul. "What would you do?"

"If the spider can do that, it is cleverer than I am," said Jules.

Here is what the spider did. It climbed to the top of a willow branch at the water's edge. It let out a long thread, which floated in the air. Then it waited. A puff of wind blew the end of the thread across the stream, where it caught in the branches on the other side. The spider pulled the thread tight, and its bridge was ready.

"Oh, how simple!" cried Jules. "And none of us thought of it."

Adapted from The Story-book of Science by Jean-Henri Fabre (1917).