The Little Ones *Do* Bite!

“Tomorrow,” Newkirk said as he expertly dealt the cards. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”

LeBeau raised an eyebrow. “So?”

“Well, that’s the worst night of the week for a POW, isn’t it? With thoughts of the nights back home, with a girl in your arms...”

“I thought that was recently changed to Friday,” Kinch remarked wryly as he picked up his cards.

“It was. But I changed it back to Saturday. I’m on a winning streak tonight; then it’s bearable without girls.”

Carter looked up from pulling out his footlocker from under his bunk. “Do you ever think about anything but girls, Newkirk?”

“Of course I do,” Newkirk grinned. “I think about women, and ladies, and birds, females, dames, damsels...”

“I believe that is the Colonel’s line, Newkirk,” LeBeau mockingly reproached.

The general snicker broke off abruptly with the violent slamming shut of Carter’s footlocker.

“What’s with you then? See a ghost?” Newkirk scoffed.

With the dazed, almost wary way Carter was staring at his footlocker, the question certainly was valid. It took a moment for the sudden silence and multiple stares to penetrate to his brain though. “Huh? Um... no. No ghost. I just...” He gulped audibly. “I just thought I still had a candybar in there. But then I remembered that I had given it to Langenscheidt a few days ago.”

“Well, no reason to have us jump out of our skin for that.” The men at the table returned their attention to their cards. And on the floor behind them, Carter carefully lifted the lid of his footlocker enough to be able to peer inside.

He hadn’t imagined it. His footlocker was crawling with little brown spiders... Five, six, eight of them already tried to get up on the rim, to go and explore this new universe. But there was no way even animal friend Carter would let that happen, for despite their fairly small size, he knew what kind of spider this was!

He quickly slammed the locker shut again – probably breaking a few baby spider legs, but whatever happened, these little guys were not to get out in the barracks. The guys would be livid, and truth be told, even he was a little wary of an entire barracks full of spiders...

“What are you doing?” an irritated LeBeau asked behind him. And before Carter could stop him, he reached out and lifted the lid again.

His eyes bulged. Spiders – little brown spiders filling up every little corner of the footlocker, energetically crawling across each other and...

Slam! Carter pushed the lid shut again.

“Carter,” Kinch began, but LeBeau’s incredulous gasps got everyone’s attention instead.

“Mon Dieu... By Jove, De Gaulle and all that is holy...!”

Newkirk put down his cards. “That sounds serious, mate. Let’s have a look.”

“No!” Carter said quickly as Newkirk, too, reached for the lid of his footlocker.

“Why not? Got a little secret in there, have you?

“No secrets.” Carter shook his head. “It’s just...”

“Spiders,” LeBeau breathed, still looking dazed.

“Spiders?”

“Spiders,” the Frenchman confirmed. “Hundreds, thousands of spiders.”

Newkirk stared at him in disbelief. “Thousands?”

LeBeau shuddered. “His whole locker full!”

The other guys had gathered around now, too, and stood staring at the offending footlocker. And at Carter, who had turned an uncomfortable red.

“Let’s have a look,” Kinch said sensibly. “Surely it can’t be that bad.”

“No!” Carter and LeBeau cried in a vehement chorus. “We can’t let them out in the barracks!” Carter added.

“Of course we don’t want a thousand spiders crawling around the barracks,” Newkirk said. “But what’s wrong with taking a look?”

“Because they might get out.” Carter gulped. “Would you want to have an army of Betsies marching around here?”

“Betsies?”

The guys snickered, and LeBeau inquired, “Who is Betsy?”

But Kinch’s eyes dilated as realization set in. “You didn’t...”

Carter nodded unhappily. “I just couldn’t kill her. She is so beautiful, you know. So I decided to keep her in my locker. At least she’d be warm and cosy there. But...”

“But you didn’t know she was expecting,” Kinch completed for him with a barely repressed shudder.

LeBeau frowned. “Who’s expecting?”

Carter gulped. “Remember that big brown spider we had in the barracks a while ago?”

Now all the men goggled, and some of them hastily backed away from the infested footlocker.

“You mean...” Newkirk barely got the words out. “You mean you’ve got an army of those... those monstrosities in there?”

Carter nodded. “Well, they’re still only babies,” he extenuated. “Only about this big.” He held his fingers about an inch and a half apart.

“But soon they will be...” Newkirk had to swallow something, and suddenly he dashed towards the Colonel’s quarters. “Colonel Hogan!”

The barely suppressed panic in Newkirk’s voice caught Hogan’s instant attention. “Was ist los?” He looked at the gathering by the table. “Kinch?”

But it was Newkirk who answered. “It’s Carter! He’s got a million of those giant monster spiders in his locker!”

Hogan frowned, and Carter corrected the information, saying, “Not a million, Newkirk. Spiders don’t lay a million eggs at a time. A few hundred at most.”

“Yeah, but before you know it, those few hundred start breeding amongst themselves and...”

Even Carter paled at that thought.

“We’ve got to get rid of them, sir. And fast,” Kinch recommended.

“Kill them,” LeBeau said.

“And good this time!” Newkirk emphasized. “Do we have some mustardgas perhaps that we can funnel into that locker?”

“That’s cruel, Newkirk!” Carter protested. “After all, they’re only babies.”

“What, you want to set them free? Are you out of your bleeding mind? They’ll just come back here as fast as their hairy legs can carry them!”

But as the men argued on, a small smile crept into Hogan’s face, growing bigger and bigger till he wore a full ear-to-ear grin. “Hold it, guys,” he interrupted the heated argument. “I’ve got a perfect idea to get rid of these spiders.”

They all turned to him. “What? How?”

Hogan hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “Well, our orders are to obstruct and harass the enemy in any way we can, right?”

“Right,” Newkirk agreed with a grin, already seeing where this was going.

“So,” Hogan continued. “Let’s harass them. Newkirk, find me an old rusty padlock.”

Half an hour later, Hogan and Carter, carrying the spider infested footlocker between them, carelessly ambled past the guard on the porch of the Kommandantur and barged into Klink’s office without as much as a knock.

“Kommandant,” Hogan cut straight to the heart of the matter. “Do you have a file or a metal saw we could borrow?”

Klink raised his eyebrows. “A metal saw? Are you out of your mind, Hogan? The last thing we’d keep in a prison camp is a metal saw!”

“But this is an emergency, sir!” They put down the footlocker just inside the door. “You see, one of the boys played a childish prank on poor Carter here, and locked his footlocker with all his possessions in it with an old padlock he had found. But when he finally gave up the key, it broke in the lock as he tried to open it! So now Carter will never be able to get out his clean underwear – unless we can open that padlock!”

Klink sighed. “Alright, alright. I’ll see if one of the guards can get it open. But I hope you understand that there’s no way I’m going to give you a metal saw!”

Hogan nodded. “That’s fine, too. Isn’t it, Carter?”

“Yes, sir. As long as I can get to my clean underwear again. Gee, I was just about to change it tomorrow – what I’m wearing now I’ve been wearing for over a month!”

Klink physically backed away. “Colonel Hogan, don’t you think it’s time for one of those hygiene lectures of yours?”

“Yes, sir,” Hogan sighed demurely.

“Now leave that locker here, and get out you two. I’ve got work to do. I’ll send for you once we get that locker open.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” With something resembling a professional salute, Hogan and Carter stepped out – only to run straight into major Hochstetter coming in.

“Paah!” the major snarled as he brushed past them and into the office. Followed by a crash and a screeched, “What is this footlocker doing here?”

Outside, Hogan gave Carter a grin. “Even better,” he said. “Let’s go and listen in.”

“What is this footlocker doing here?”

“Oh! Major Hochstetter! I... um... it’s from one of the prisoners. The lock is broken, you see, and they wanted a chain saw... no, a metal saw to get it open. But that of course I could not allow. It’s not without reason that no one has ever escaped from Stalag 13. So I promised I’d...”

“Klink! You imbecile!” Hochstetter had scrambled to his feet again. “Did it ever occur to you to wonder why the prisoners would leave a locked footlocker in your office?”

“You mean...!” Klink grabbed his desk. “They’re trying to kill me...!” he grated.

“That would be a blessing, yes. But it would also mean that they can get hold of materials to kill you with. Which means...” He waved his gloves in triumph. “They have to be able to get out of camp, and Hogan’s excuse as an idle prisoner of war is totally annihilated!”

“But...” Klink began.

But Hochstetter already picked up the – rather heavy – footlocker and turned to go. “I am confiscating this footlocker, Klink. I want to examine it in full detail, and if this proves that Hogan is Papa Bear indeed, then your head will roll along with his!”

Finding tools of any kind was no problem of course at a place like Gestapo headquarters, and within ten minutes, Hochstetter held the open padlock in his hands.

“Now let’s see,” he mumbled, and slowly, carefully, he inched open the lid.

No ticking noises or anything. Perhaps he should try and feel first, very carefully. For the locker could be boobytrapped of course.

Cautiously, he stuck his hand into the chink. And pulled right back. “Ouch!” Something had stung him! Instinctively he put his fingers in his mouth... and nearly choked right away! There was something... something alive in his mouth!

In an uncontrolled movement, he tried to spit it out. But that same uncontrolled movement caused the other hand that was holding the lid of the locker to jerk as well, throwing open the infested footlocker...

When they found the poor major an hour or so later, he lay unconscious on the floor, with little bitemarks on every inch of his skin. Small spiders were crawling all over him and all around the office. And one big queen of a spider the size of a man’s hand was squatted right on his face, contentedly watching her offspring’s explorations.

Gestapo headquarters was closed for a week. Exterminators were brought in to deal with the menace, but whether they really caught every little one of them...?

The only person who got something good out of this was Sergeant Andrew J. Carter. For with the next airdrop from London, he received a complete set of new spare clothes.

The End (?)

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I don´t own Hogan´s Heroes; I just like to play with them.

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