Monday, October 01, 2007

Spider ragnarok

Last night a fat garden spider spun a vast orb web in my car. It hung on the near-vertical between wheel and driver's seat. All night she'd toiled, and when I walked out to the car she was sitting right in the centre of her new web, a spider placed exactly in the space my heart occupies when I'm seated.

Opened the car door and heard a peculiar series of tiny, sticky clicks: snapping spider silk. And what was left of the web: a quarter or so, slouching at the top but still on the vertical, in the driver's space. She'd anchored it with heavy silken strands to the roof, the door and door frame, gearstick and windscreen. And wheel. Snap snap snap. And there she was, dropped onto the grey seat, clambering around like a fat crumb of gingerbread the size of a thumbnail. I picked her up and put her on a likely-looking bush. And felt terribly crushed on her behalf.

This is why.

1 comment:

Rebecca K. O'Connor said...

My brother and I are always discussing the ridiculousness of claiming to create art solely for the sake of art...I find your orb web inside a car a perfect metaphor for this. It can neither be enjoyed for aesthic nor be useful in purpose. I for one, find your actions to be spider therapy. --Out of the vacuum with you, Miss Archnid and into the world.