Spider Web

Spider Web

Fall has sealed the ground with heavy morning dew. Leaves are changing their colors so the frost can find them in play. And, after a full summer of practice, spiders spin their webs with grandeur. Have you seen one? Big and perfect at this time of year - as if they were made just for display. These spiders and their webs make me think of confident, solitary fisherman with their well used nets - their boats hidden near shore. During the early fall, morning dew sometimes strings itself like pearls along the sticky strands of web - outlining and fouling these invisible traps. Just watch one for a while and you may find a complete world within it. There is enough truth near a web to keep a whole cycle of life turning through triumph and tragedy without effort.

Spiders construct with 2 types of threads. The first threads are structural and radiate out from a center. These are the thickest of a spider's strands and are stronger than steel for their size. These structural strands are not very elastic and not sticky at all. Then the fabric of the web itself is traced around and around the structural strands in an increasing circle with a sticky thin thread that is very elastic and functions to absorb energy with out breaking in a violent but small scale struggle. With a blade of grass you can call the spider out. Tickle a strand, as if you were a struggling insect - caught in the web... Watch for the spider to sense life's argument against death through a single tending foot on the web. If the struggle is scaled just right then the spider will rush toward its web's promise. If the web becomes aged or broken or fouled by morning dew, a spider may eat its own web and thus carry it away to spin and set out somewhere else - for although spiders have eight legs, they have no pockets in their pants.