The Kinsley graphic. [volume] (Kinsley, Kan.) 1890-1940, 1903-12-25
A NIGHT OF HORROR
CALIFORNIA GIRLS EXPERIENCE
WITH TARANTUEAS.
easketfuI Of the venonnous Creatures,
Gathered by Small Son of Her Host,
Brighten Young Lady Visitor Into a
Serious Illness.

1t was a strange, fearful experience
that Miss Hitchcock, a beautiful young
California girl, had as a welcome
home to her native state after three
years spent in school in Paris, says
the New York Herald. How she es-
capped terrible death is mystery.
but although she received no injury
she sustained shock that made her,
i'll many days and lived through
night so full of horror that the mem
DRY of it will never fade from her rec
objection.
During one long night she was be-
sieged by hideous tarantulas, whose
bite is death. They crawled and wrig
gled all about her They were on her
face and arms, and when she tried to
escape from the room they were I'M
der her feet and forced her to retreat
again to the bed.
She was stopping at the home of
some friends in Los Angeles on the
night of her arrival. She was awak-
ened in the middle of the night by
some bristling, fuzzy thing crawling
over her face. She struck the object
away. She dropped her hand and it
fell on some other hairy, wriggling OBJ
ject. She was badly frightened and
stepped from the bed, and her bare
foot fell upon some coarse, wriggling
creature, and another one brushed
against her ankles
She cried out, but her room was in
O xxyiy Of h0 kA-
parts of the mansion where the other
members of the household and the
servants slept and no one came to her
aid.
She plunged back into bed, and her
face as it touched the pillow came in
contact with another of the mysterious
visitors that had so alarmed her. She
pulled the bed clothes about her, but
the night was warm, and-she was
forced to throw them off, and then the
horrible, wriggling, hairy disturbers
of her sleep swarmed over her. All
night she sat screaming and trembling
and striking at the mysterious objects
that assailed her When morning
came the family heard cries and
rushed to her room, to discover that
she was besieged by tarantulas. The
loathsome creatures were crawling all
| over the bed and about the room
Miss HitchcOck's host secured a cane
and killed all of the tarantulas and
then the young woman promptly faint
ed and was ill for several days before
she finally recovered from her fright.
The explanation of how the taran-
tulas came to be in Miss Hitchcock S
room could not ne secured at first
The case was great mystery until a
small boy in the family was observed
| to be in some distress. He was taken
! into the inQuisitiOn and his father in
| terviewed him at some length. Then
the mystery was solved. The small
| boy had secured the tarantulas in a
vacant field. A curio firm in Los An
geles who kill and mount the insects
pay royalty of cents apiece for
them, and the boys of the town go
out into the fields and catch them with
pincers.
The boy in the family where Miss
Hitchcock was stopping had rounded
up forty or fifty of the insects. He
put them in big basket and took
them home. Rightly conjecturing
that his family would raise a protest
against their home being made a peni-
Tertiary for tarantulas, the small
boy had hidden his basket in Miss
| Hitchcock's room, not knowing it
was going to be occupied. The taran-
tulas during the night had tunneled
their way to freedom, but not being
able to escape from the room had
turned their attention to assaulting
Miss Hitchcock.
The vigorous discipline applied to
the small boy by his father when the
facts in the case came out caused him
to +oathe tarantulas with deep and
|'deadly loathing, and now when they
are even mentioned in his presence
he grows sad and hastily slides f0r
the outer air.