The Da Vinci Notebooks at sacred-texts.com
This creature entangles itself in the legs of the elephant which falls upon it, and so both die, and in its death it is avenged.
She, in pairing opens her mouth and at last clenches her teeth and kills her husband. Then the young ones, growing within her body rend her open and kill their mother.
Saliva, spit out when fasting will kill a scorpion. This may be likened to abstinence from greediness, which removes and heals the ills which result from that gluttony, and opens the path of virtue.