Spiders and the Amazing Webs The Weave
Poetry is a fresh morning spiderweb telling a story of moonlight hours of weaving and waiting during a night. (Carl Sandburg)
I found this absolutely perfect spiderweb last week on one of my morning walks. On many days when I’m out as the sun comes up, dew paints the spiders’ webs to make them easy to see. Often they show up by the dozens low among the grass or hanging between the tall weeds the way this one does. Sometimes the web is small, no bigger than a saucer or you can have one like this that’s the size of an umbrella as a friend said on Facebook when I posted the picture there. Not that it would have stopped the rain, but the webs do capture dewdrops.
Other readers used words like exquisite, amazing, beautiful, miraculous to describe the web. In a way it does seem miraculous that the spider in the middle of that web could have woven such an elaborate web in its moonlight hours. And not that many hours either. The internet says that orb-weaver spiders, responsible for the intricate, wheel-shaped webs, typically build a new web every night maybe in an hour or two. Then they take it down in the morning. Each night a spider weaves an almost identical web. A marvel of nature and God’s plan for the spider.
While this web looks like it might have taken all the web building material this spider had, those who have studied spiders assure us spiders can’t run out of web material because they can continuously produce silk from spinnerets at the end of their abdomen. They can also recycle proteins by consuming their old webs, especially if they had a bad day with no caught bugs and get hungry. Then they eat their own silk to conserve energy and proteins needed to produce more materials for new webs.
I like spiderwebs. I prefer not to catch my face in them. The spiders prefer I don’t too since when I do, I become a web wrecker. Sometimes if I see them when I’m walking a path, I try to duck under them because I think of all the work the poor spider did just to try to catch its breakfast.
I admire a spider’s patience. First it spins that amazing web. The ones that aren’t as striking as this take a lot of spinning too. The ground spiders weave a thick web with an inviting tunnel opening where the spider lurks waiting for an unwary bug. Some spiders just throw a few lines from bush to bush waiting for that flying bug to not dive or duck its sticky web. Sometimes the web looks as if the spider woke up dizzy and couldn’t quite figure out any kind of pattern. But then that is its pattern. However they spin their webs, they then sit on them very quietly waiting for their dinner to come to them.
When I walk in the same pastures or hayfields without dew highlighting the webs, I rarely think about all the spiders that must be hiding out in the grass waiting to spin their night webs. Even if I did remember to look, I doubt I’d see those spiders. They would scoot away from this big monster of a person who could step on them. I might spot one or two if I carefully kept looking, but not the dozens that will be weaving by moonlight.
Spiders aren’t the only thing we overlook in our daily walk through life. Nature’s wonders are spilled out all around us. This morning when I went out the sun was coming up and a few clouds were iced with pink. If I had been out a little earlier, the sunrise might have been even more spectacular.
How often do I stay inside at my computer instead of going out to enjoy the wonder of the stars or note the rising of the moon? There are so many marvels of nature that can be mine if only I’ll just look. The sparkle of creek water in the sun. Mushrooms growing on a tree. The pattern of ice on a creek in the winter. The underside of a butterfly. A dragonfly’s wings. Persimmons turning golden in the fall. A bird taking a bath in a puddle. Lightning bugs sprinkled through the dusky air of evening.
Common things we take for granted can be those marvels that light up our spirits the way stars light up the night sky. And spiderwebs in their many shapes and forms can be among those wonders.
What are some of nature’s wonders that you like to see?
