Well we’ve flipped a calendar page over and have thus arrived in August. We are crawling a little faster toward Fall every day; in fact, I’ve been noticing the gradual later sunrise and earlier sunset times already. I’ve never been a fan of August, but then I’m not a hot-weather fan. I’m also not a fan of “webbing”, another phenomenon that happens later in the month of August. I hate going out in the backyard to water and there are fine spider webs everywhere. Because the early morning sun is not powerful enough to light up the dewy webs, you often walk blindly through gargantuan silky webs, seemingly spun overnight and which are suspended from bushes to plants throughout the yard. This just totally freaks me out. My butterfly bushes were a haven for spider webs – I was constantly pawing the air with my hose nozzle to clear a path to walk. Sometimes when I am out walking, I’ve run into a spider web strung across the sidewalk and I can’t see it until I walk through it –I get frantic to get the sticky mess off my clothes, lest its owner tag along for a ride. I realize once you leave the confines of your home, that anything goes as to critters – after all, they live outside and have as much right as you do to be there.

This morning I witnessed the most savage and barbaric act that I just had to write about it.

I’m sure when you were a kid you heard or read the poem “The Spider and the Fly” by Mary Howitt. This poem has been around for nearly two centuries.

The Spider and the Fly

“Oh no, no,” said the little Fly, “to ask me is in vain,
For who goes up your winding stair
-can ne’er come down again.”

Well, that may be a cute poem on paper, or perhaps to recite, but I have to say I’ve never seen a spider take out a fly in real life. All this Summer I have monitored the wall near my garage where a huge brown spider lives. I sweep down the web and the spider returns the next day. The few times I’ve had the hose out this Summer, I’ve sprayed down the web; the next day the beast and his web are back. So, I just quit messin’ with it and have just bravely dealt with this spider the best I could. Whenever I have to open the garage door, I move as far away as possible, but he always sees me and scurries like heck across the web and back into his hidey hole which is behind the siding. I will tell you that if he strings a web to the garage door handle I’m visiting my next-door neighbor Marge and asking her to pack her patience and some paper towels and come over ASAP. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s come over to deal with a large spider for me.

For the past two Summers, I had a massive black spider living between the siding slats and he rigged up a web from behind the siding to the screen door handle and to the mailbox. It was huge. I used the jet spray on my hose nozzle in the area every day and the next day it was back … I’d go out around the house to get the mail with heavy rubber gloves on. In fact I still do this as it has always been a favorite spot for spiders to hide over the years, but so far there haven’t been any spiders near the mailbox in 2013.

This morning I returned from a long and refreshing 3 ¾ mile walk and went over to inspect the spider web, just to torment myself. As I walked up to the web, a fly flew directly into the sticky web and immediately got tangled up – he was kicking his legs and flipping his wings. Now mind you, I have no affinity for flies, but this was fascinating, in a macabre sort of way, to witness. Soon that spider scurried out onto the web and wrapped his legs around the fly who was kicking and hanging on for dear life. The spider paralyzed the fly somehow – the legs went limp and the thrashing stopped. Then, quick as a whip, the spider pulled its prey into the hidey-hole. I was horrified, then disgusted, by this savage act of cruelty. Close encounters of the worst kind. Was this act worthy of a few paragraphs in this blog post? Probably not, but all factions of nature spark my interest and this little interaction has been on my mind all day since I witnessed it. Admittedly, it is no different from the dog-eat-dog world of humans: in the minority are the backstabbers, the ruthless or selfish survivors … then, of course, you have the meek and mild or compliant ones who make up the majority. Happily, I fall into the last nomenclature. Sadly, the outside world can be a beautiful but cruel place to live in sometimes.

The moral of this tale of two of God’s creatures could be summed up in this famous quote as well:

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!” Sir Walter Scott