Live and Let Live

As I sat down to lunch yesterday, opening a book to peruse while I ate, something small and mote-like caught the corner of my eye. I thought it was a fly, but soon noticed it wasn't moving quite the way a fly might. Closer examination revealed a baby spider hanging some distance over the table top, suspended, I assumed, from the lamp overhead.

I swiped a hand about two feet above it, raised my arm, and watched as the spider rose with it; I’d successfully snagged its lifeline. It was releasing silk as fast as its miniscule spinnerets could go, but as it was so very minute; literally, a speck about as big as a pin head. I was able to keep winding its gossamer thread around the back of my hand faster than it could spin it out, the slightest tickle on the hairs there letting me know I had a hold of it.

I moved to the back door, opened it, and gingerly stepped outside, hoping my charge was still along for the ride. After closing the door behind me, I tried for several minutes to catch sight of the little arachnid, but couldn’t see it in the bright daylight. I kept winding up the silk, hoping I hadn’t inadvertently crushed the miniature thing somehow, or lost it when the door was shut.

Finally, I had the idea to hold my arm up as high as I could, and against the backdrop of blue sky above me, I spotted it, still dangling rather helplessly about two feet beneath my hand, floating lazily at about a thirty degree angle.

I laid what I hoped was a reasonable length of silk against the side of a wooden platform that supports a garbage can and a barbecue I never use. I kept dragging the line sideways, wondering if I’d be able to sever it once it had caught on something, and trying to spy the tiniest spider I ever did spy.

Eventually, the spider’s silken lifeline caught, and I spotted it not far away from the edge of the platform, still twisting and flailing, gently buffeted by the breeze. I pulled away, but the little thing pulled up with me, so I realized we were still attached to one another. After several attempts to unbind us from a connection I could feel but not actually see, I managed to pull away and not bring the spider, too, and watched with deep satisfaction as the diminutive creature scrambled up its line until it found a foothold on the wood, and crawling free at last, disappeared between two boards soon after.

It was an interesting little adventure, reminding me of Little Miss Muffet, the fairy tale I read in my youth. I guess it really happens that spiders sometimes drop in for a bite; though I wasn’t eating curds and whey. Maybe they’re not all that fussy, or don’t read fairy tales. All I know is, it was something that filled my heart for a brief moment. The spider has fewer of those than I, but at least it might have a better chance now to live them