Orb Spider

I find myself trying to communicate with the small white butterflies, telling them to be careful.

I’ve watched the same, single orb spider in my yard for a week. She has grown. It hasn’t been easy for her. Her first webs were spun very close to the golden rod, and she anchored them to, regrettably, moveable objects: to the garbage can set out Sunday night which was emptied by the garbage man on Monday. Web destroyed. My driver’s side rear view mirror…off to work the next morning. Web destroyed. The yard debris recycling canister, picked up on Wednesday. Web destroyed. And she was also negotiating a ton of rain on Tuesday all day.

She’s still here. This time she made an anchor point high on a branch of an old dogwood tree about 10 feet away. She’s changed the angle of her structure, its plane faces north and south now - all the previous ones were east to west. She’s moved its center a couple feet from the golden rod, but anchored to it - she’s spinning it right above the season’s last patch of moon flowers. At night big moths come to them. At day, so many small gnats in the air, and the bees near the golden rod.

The first day I found her, I also found a bee struggling to release from her web. I assisted with a leaf I picked up from the ground. Wasn’t easy for the bee to get that stickiness of silk off it’s body, but I worked with the bee and the leaf for a short time, and it was able to buzz away and find a few more moments of life and flight. Unknown how long that lasted or is still thriving.

I’m presuming this spider is a female because the google machine tells me that female orb spiders are notably bigger than males. There’s not a second spider around to measure her by, but she’s pretty big and has been growing since last week.

She’s never given up. And she’s learned every time she’s spun a new web - new angle, different placement in space, higher anchor points so I don’t inadvertently walk through the line and destroy the whole thing. It’s sad to watch it become destroyed. It basically disappears except for a line or two. The whole geometry is interdependent. There’s no saving it once you break an anchor line.

What hasn’t changed is the type of web or how close she lays down the silk lines to each other, or the exact angles. She’s happy with the design. Something from a great mind, like source. She does it and can do it until her last breath. Arthritis. Arthropod. I wonder about the relation of those words.

This web is a really good one. If the weather cooperates with her, it will last a while, I think. The neighbor’s cat Gilligan, he can walk all around it and not hit any anchor lines. I’m only 5’3” and she’s made that dog wood anchor point taller than me and inside the edge of the front walk. She learned I destroy them. But it doesn’t seem she blames me.

It’s taken her about an hour to weave this one. She’s resting in the middle of it now. The web has already caught a good number of very small gnat like creatures; in the sun it’s glistening. She’s not moving towards any of the gnats caught - she’s tired. She’ll eat later.

I’ll keep watch in case I can free someone from it without destroying it. Nothing I can do about the gnats. But a bee or a butterfly, I might be able to intervene.

I tried taking a photo of it with my phone, but my phone doesn’t have a macro lens. I did catch the glistening, though. It rendered like white squares and rectangles.

I guess that’s the information I’ll live with: sunset light that reflects off a well made web renders itself in the digital world as small white squares and rectangles.

I hope she eats soon and that no one gets caught; I hope both things. That’s a heart of disappointment. Clearly my mind’s knee jerk reaction is not a form of enlightenment. Even worse, I start to diminish the orb spider’s mind after a while - I say to myself - “She thinks in angles and lines.” Which must be so vastly far from the truth. She must think strategically. I don’t know if she thinks compassionately. She may, since, I imagine her mind so close to the source. Maybe with every hunt she weaves a prayer - “May this being struggle no more in my web. May I end its suffering in this lifetime and all its future lifetimes.”

That’s a thing, you know? Even the lamas, really well trained monks and nuns, they always emphasize how lucky we are to have been born human. And even they will say other beings, lower beings, aren’t able to muster a mind of compassion. Then they’ll say, “Everything is in enlightened status,” that is, everything on the planet is totally enlightened, but we can’t see that moment to moment due to our own obscurations.

But the fact is, and I know this because I’ve watched the lamas closely- they always reference the observable universe. They don’t make stuff up. They’ll use their imagination for certain practices, but when it comes to the world, they don’t reference anything that’s not observable.

So that supports the idea that not even they can know the mind and heart of a spider. And I can’t let that idea go. They really don’t know if Gilligan the neighbor’s cat doesn’t have moments of total enlightenment. How could they know that or not.

When I run these points over and around, matching to logic and observation as best I can, maybe the lama finds himself trying to communicate with me, imagines me as a small white butterfly, telling me to be careful.