Webs and webs

As it grew dark yesterday evening the wind rose, shaking the TP, tossing the treetops around and kicking up little dust devils in the road. I noticed as I closed the blinds over my bunk that Lacey was having quite a ride in her web. The whole structure was catching gusts of wind and ballooning in and out, while she hung on for her life.

It's been windy before, and she's been tossed around, and in my waking periods I'll note that she is industriously repairing any breaches in the web. But last night when I turned out the light about 1:30 and opened the blind I could see she was in trouble.

Somehow she had become entangled in the web, and in her struggles to free herself she had become wrapped entirely in silk, as effectively as a fly. I got the flashlight and had a closer look. I couldn't tell if she was alive or not, but fearing I'd do her damage if I tried to untangle her, and knowing that orb spiders eat their own webs and reprocess the protein I let her be and drifted off to sleep, worrying about a spider.

I awakened several times in the wee hours, to find her still as death, and still wrapped tightly. But at about 5:00 am I awakened in time to see her give a mighty push and break free of her wrappings. She ran to the far corner of the window on one of the few remaining threads of web, and hung there. By 6:00 am she had moved to the upper left hand corner of the window, where she hung head down on another shred of web.

When I woke at 8:00 am she was nowhere to be seen. Had she dropped to the ground? Was she so exhausted she'd died and fallen? After breakfast I went out looking for her. (Okay, some of you may think I am getting a little weird about this, and I may be. But it's a harmless sort of weirdness.)

I didn't see my little spider friend anywhere, but I have several large pots of petunias beneath the window, so she could have gone in, or under, any of them.

I had to go to town to grocery shop, but before that I needed to water my tomato plants. While standing with the hose in hand I spotted her, crouched in the protected recess between the window frames. She was sound asleep, and still is, several hours later. I'm glad she ate well yesterday, because I don't think she would have survived this ordeal on an empty stomach.

Perhaps she is injured, but I think it more likely that she's just a bit sore and totally worn out from her struggle. She hasn't yet even begun to rebuild her web, which is totally destroyed. But she will. She will hitch up her little belt, and start over, because that's what we all do when we have survived a crisis.

We are all connected. The same life force which animates the little brown and yellow spider flows through me, my husband and children, my friends and neighbours, my big orange cat. We are all co-creators of this web of life. We all love our lives and fight to breathe, eat, move and BE just one more moment, hour or day.