the Crows Nest

The Original Spider. 

When it was time, the Original Spider gave birth to everything. She breathed life into the wind and the stones and set fires with lightning and storms. The sea, all rivers and rocks, and sand, and soil, and waterfalls, and snow, and everything come forth. Snakes and seals and swallows and starfish lived together. each doing their own thing. The horse tail rooted deep into the ground, and the beech trees stretched into the sky. The worm ate the weasel and the mushroom ate the worm. 

From this abundance the human stepped forward.  He forgot his place and took more than his share.  He hoarded up what he didn’t need and destroyed what wasn’t in his way.  He wasted the bounty and enslaved the other animals.  His greed begun to consume everything. 

Fearing for the future, the animals held a council.  It was agreed that the tiniest of them, the microbes and tiny worms would attack the humans. They would make them ill and weaken or kill them.  And that is what they did. 

The more the humans lived their greedy lives, the more they chopped down, the more they travelled, the more they spread their microbial diseases and the more they died. 

Seeing the work of the tiny animals, the plants held their own council.  They felt sorry for the sickly humans and made a way to help.  They decided to make a remedy for each of the illnesses which had been unleashed, and to offer it to those humans who had ears to hear.  The mushrooms were invited to the council but decided not to make a collective decision. Instead they would make medicines or poisons according to how they individually saw fit: and that is how they carried on. 

DNB Jan 2025