What is "the poem" that the spider refers to in Philip Dick's short story "Expendable"? In the short story "Expendable" by Philip K. Dick, the protagonist is a man who can communicate with spiders. At one point, after fighting off a home invasion by an army of ants, the protagonist is seated at his desk, armed and despairing, when a spider drops by to talk to him. > The spider slid down beside him onto the desk top. "Sorry. Hope you aren't frightened, as in the poem." What does this line mean? Is there some famous poem about a man being frightened by a spider landing beside him, or by facing an invasion of ants? If so, is the spider actually supposed to be familiar with literature?

It could be a reference to the classical nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet:

> Little Miss Muffet
> Sat on a tuffet,
> Eating her curds and whey;
> Along came a spider,
> Who sat down beside her,
> And frightened Miss Muffet away.

This was what immediately came to my mind on seeing "spider", "beside", and "frightened" in the same sentence. It's a fairly well-known children's poem, I think (at least in the UK - not sure about the US where Philip K. Dick grew up).

As for whether the spider's supposed to be familiar with literature ... I suspect we aren't supposed to overthink this one. It's a short story, and spiders are depicted as intelligent sentient beings, part of a great war between species. Making a spider character refer to literature helps to emphasise that effect, if you can suspend your disbelief enough not to wonder why spiders would (or could) read human poetry.