A Noiseless Patient Spider

By Walt Whitman

A noiseless patient spider,

I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

Nature Red in Fang and Spinneret

 

In the morning the spider caught the stinkbug on the orchid...

... and spent most of the day wrapping it up . . .

By evening the work was complete and spider began hoisting the meal aloft.

I love living with Nature!

Igor

This is Igor who hangs out in our bathroom. Sometimes s/he falls out of the towel I've just picked up to dry off with. Or out of my nightgown. I figure that the adrenalin rush is probably good for me.

Mostly, though, Igor just lurks . . . ignoring me and waiting for a unwary bug.

Yesterday Igor posed nicely on the scroll that hangs behind the toilet. Perhaps s/he was checking out the Edward Gorey book and the pictures of strange insects.

I've been calling this critter a wolf spider but Google searches have only confused me. Wolf spiders evidently have eight eyes bit I'm seeing only six.

Whatever sort of spider Igor is, s/he's a handsome specimen. 

Not So Itsy Bitsy Spider

Cob Webs or Fairy Hammocks?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Garden Encounter

I met this handsome spider in my herb garden a few days ago as I was performing a yearly chore. The garlic chives that make ornamental V's in the box beds are hardy and attractive but, left to their own devices, they will self-sow like mad.

 So every year I make a point of cutting off the spent flowers and ripening seed heads before they drop those little black seeds everywhere.

There was one problem: Ms. Spider's web was attached at one end to a garlic chive flower. She crouched there, staring at me with all those eyes, and I couldn't bear to destroy her lovely web.

So we came to an accommodation: I carefully trimmed away all the flowers except the one her web was attached to.  (Click on the picture to biggify and see if you can find Ms. Spider.)

And she did a little repair where I'd blundered into her web before noticing her.

Web World

Morning mist reveals a multitude of expectant spiderwebs strung between outstretched twigs and awaiting the catch of the day.

Tidy, regular reasoned constructions, spun to an age old pattern., each web is a little principality -- a kingdom (queendom?) of one.

But in the midst of all these classic spider webs is this odd, somewhat random effort -- the palace of some mad arachnid with dreams of grandeur? 

Or merely the work of a common funnel web spider, tired of dwelling in the grass and opting for a web with a view? 

Shelob or Charlotte?

This silhouette on the window screen caught my eye this morning -- a very large spider sitting on a very large egg sac.

Spiders are something lots of folks react to about like they do to snakes. Take J.R.R. Tolkien's Shelob in the second of The Lord of the Rings trilogy,The Two Towers:

"But still she was there, who was there before Sauron, and before the first stone of Barad-dûr; and she served none but herself, drinking the blood of Elves and Men, bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness."

Harsh words -- and mighty effective. But then there's E.B. White's Charlotte from the beloved Charlotte's Web.

"It's a perfectly beautiful egg sac," said Wilbur, feeling as happy as if he had constructed it himself.
"Yes, it is pretty," replied Charlotte, patting the sac with her two front legs. "Anyway, I can guarantee that it is strong. It's made out of the toughest material I have. It is also waterproof. The eggs are inside and will be warm and dry."

I don't know what this brooding mama is --maybe a Wolf Spider ? She doesn't have a web so I needn't expect messages. I wouldn't try picking her up as many spiders, not just Black Widows and Brown Recluses, have bites that can be painful. But I like looking at her as she regards me with her multiple eyes.

Is she a Shelob or a Charlotte -- or just another of nature's wonders?