Life in the basement shaft
Most people in the city care to a certain extent how their house and near surroundings appear. People sweep tiles and staircases, underground shafts are emptied of fallen leaves, etc. However, this is not the way if you are a nature lover. Instead, we pour things down the cellar shafts. Already there are vast amounts of leaves and pebbles, but this is not enough for spiders, beetles, toads and other litter critters to keep warm. If you want to help - and we all do, of course - you can instead offer the poor things an abundance of spruce branches, moss and a 20 cm insulating layer of leaves, so they can get through the winter. Because going up, is just not possible.
Fortunately, the animals have plenty of food down there. In such a cellar shaft, there will always be plenty of plant material, which can be degraded by woodlice, mites and springtails, and this is the beginning of the food chain that usually ends with the toad, which is King of the Basement shaft. The toad lives down in the drain, where it sometimes travels up to hunt prey. Cosy!
However, there are also animals that move much faster than toads, woodlice and small spiders. These include the extremely beautiful ground beetle, the speckled ground beetle, which has a unique colour drawing. The species preys on mites and aphids, so it makes sense that it has found a good habitat in the cellar shaft. Another characteristic species is the great bear spider, which also dines like other predators.
In this way, the cellar shaft represent is own unique ecosystem with both plants, herbivores and predators.