One of my favorite stories is from my childhood. A group of us were swimming in the local creek. I was little, about five or six. Most of the others were bigger kids, in their teens.
I was a quiet, shy child, but intensely curious and interested in everything in nature. I was standing up near the creekbank beside some old tree roots, when I spotted the odd thing: a spider eating a frog. It was a little bitty frog, of course, barely a half-inch long, from what I could see (half of him being already gone). I was fascinated by the big spider, but sad for the little frog. I went up to my big sister and shyly told her, "I just saw a spider eating a frog."
"Oh, silly! You mean you saw a frog eating a spider! Spiders don't eat frogs!" I tried to correct her, but she wouldn't hear of it. I finally persuaded her to take a look.
"Oh my God," she screamed, laughing. "She did! She really did see a spider eating a frog!" The girls began to scream. They ran out of the water faster than anyone thought girls could run. The boys, of course, swam over to the bank and made short work of killing the big frog-eating spider. That frog was the poor fellow's last meal.
The Spider That Ate The Frog
