The men of the Forestry Service appraised their axe work from beneath those wide hats they wore. They stood around the hacked apart tree spider, each one of their padded leather high collared jackets splattered with the gooey innards. A young trainee of the Service busied himself with harvesting the creature’s silk while another harvested the venom. Axes dripped with oozing gore and the knee high green boots were proved watertight by the ankle deep guts.

“There’s a nest nearby. I’d wager my badge on it,” the leader of the ambush team said to his men. “Fan out, look for signs. Webs in the canopy, bits of gear on the ground, bones, you know, the usual.”

His men moved out in teams of two, axes at the ready, hoping to find the nest where the tree spiders were originating from. Glory would come to anyone who distinguished himself today and a promotion with it. The Forestry Service was the first line of defense against the horrors of the deep wood, but tree spider baiting wears on even the hardest man’s soul.