In one corner [of my window sill] is a rather large, irregular, three-dimensional web occupying a good quarter-cubic foot of space. It was into this web that the stricken hornet fell, catching about halfway down into the loose mesh and drawing out from her reclusiveness in the corner a nondescript brownish house spider with a body about three-eighths of an inch long. The hornet hung tail-down, twirling tenuously from a single web-thread, while its barred yellow abdomen throbbed and jabbed repeatedly in instinctive attack. The motion could not really be called defensive, as the hornet was surely too far gone to recover, but it was if it were determined to inflict whatever injury it could on whatever might approach it in its dying. Defense in insects, as with us, seems to be founded not on the ability to survive but on the resolution to keep from forgiving as long as possible.

~ Robert Finch