Wolf said, “Possum’s burned his tail off and now Buzzard’s bald, and we still don’t have any sun. What are we going to do now?”

A tiny voice from up above said, “Send me, I’ll go! Hey, send me, I’ll go! I’ll go!”

Wolf looked all around, but he couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. “Who is that? Where are you? Come down where I can see you.”

Down from the corner of the ceiling squeaked the tiny voice: “Send meeeee!”

And right there in front of Wolf landed a tiny spider. The spider looked up and Wolf looked down, and Wolf said, “Oh, no! Not you, Grandma! You can’t go to the other side of the world. You’re too old-and besides that, you’re too slow!”

Well, this was Grandmother Spider. She had done many things to help the animals in her long life. She crossed her little arms and said, “I know I’m old. You don’t have to tell me I’m old. But I want to help my people one more time. I need a piece of clay about so big, and you’ll get me a piece, won’t you, son?”

Wolf went and got Grandmother Spider a piece of clay, and she sat in the middle of the room and began to chant. Soon she had worked the clay into a little bowl.

She picked up that beautiful clay bowl and disappeared inside the tunnel. They say it took Grandma Spider a long, long, long, long time to get to the other side of the world.

The Sun Guards were out now. They knew somebody was trying to steal

some of their sun, and they stood in a tight circle around it. They weren’t

going to let anybody through. The Sun Guards were mean-looking monsters. They had fire coming out of their heads. They had fire coming out of their mouths: Hissssss! And they held their weapons, ready for a fight.

But Grandmother Spider was so tiny that they didn’t even see her. She sneaked between them, went up to the sun, took a little piece, put it in her clay bowl, and sneaked back past the Sun Guards.

She came back down the tunnel very slowly. It took her a long, long, long, long time to get to her side of the world. And as she got closer, something happened. The light inside her bowl began to grow. The little rays stretched out of the bowl.

As she came out of the tunnel into the cave, that ball of light was growing. She could hardly even carry it.

All the animals came running to help Grandmother Spider: blind Possum and bald Buzzard, Wolf and Coyote and Bear and Deer and all the others. But that ball of light just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, and it got so big that the animals had to squeeze it out of the cave, and as it squeezed out into the world it bounced up into the sky: Boingggg

It is said that from that day on, whenever Grandmother Spider would spin her web, the shape of the sun would be at the center. And you see, Grandmother Spider spins her web that way to this very day.