Tuesday, June 8, 2010

What a Tangled Web We Weave...Us not Spiders

This morning I marveled at the overnight work of a spider who wove her web between two day-lillies. The sun's rays caught the morning dew that collected on the web illuminating its almost perfect symmetry.

Spiders use special internal glads to "spin" their silk. Usually there are at least two kinds of strands in the patterned web. There is the sticky filament for the unsuspecting prey and there is the non-sticky one for the spider itself to walk across. Flies, wasps, and large creatures who gawk at such wonders on sunny mornings do not know the difference. So if you run into one of these pieces of art work that happens to be stretched between two trees on your morning outing you need to whisk away both types of spinnings because somewhere in the "trap" is the creator of the web. Ask the fly corpse you see in some webs if this "ain't so."

How does a spider know how to do this? Do baby spiders spend time at the "knees" of momma learning lessons in how to weave? Are there late night lectures on the "art of web making?" Does each spider have to take an end of semester test that they must pass and in order to be set free on the world to weave?

Unlike the spectators who marvel at the spider's web these multi-leg spinners simply "know." They are born with the wisdom it takes to weave what would take us years to learn. I suppose this should be a lesson in humility.

The webs we weave are often messy. We seem not to know the difference in the "sticky" and the non-sticky so we often get stuck in our own web.

We "spin" out harmful words that pull in those we hurt and find they we are also trapped by our own creation. We weave patterns that we call habits and then sit beside the web complaining that we are victimized by some unseen power forgetting that we are the spinners of our own webs.

Perhaps we need to spend some time with our spider sisters. You know, watch and wait and learn. They simply know. We, however, wise masters of technology that we are...must learn.

Blessings
jody

1 comment:

  1. I love this "commentary", Jody! I have a whole new appreciation for our spider friends... Thanks for your insight.

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