Cover image by Frank Albrecht, on Unsplash. Post originally drafted in July 2020 at my house in Nashville, TN.
(Two grass spiders stalking near my porch banister.)
Most days, I sit on my front porch to write. It offers a nice view of the treetops, and at different points along the porch banister, petunias of pink and scarlet trumpet out of terracotta pots. It’s a great place to work alone, and it’s nice to be able to look at the flowers and the hillside whenever I need to take a break. It was probably during one of these breaks that I first noticed the grass spider.
At one corner of the porch banister, a sheet of spider silk slants to form a cave. Its weave is uneven and messy, cruder than the stereotypical geometric rings. One side of the silk cave is open, and the spider crouches in the back. With its yellow-gray armor, its two black stripes slicing down its abdomen, it waits with six legs poised above its head, hooked into the web. Though completely still, the spider’s arcing limbs give a sense of menace, as though it were caught, suspended on a cloud, in the half-second before pouncing.
Its stillness reminds me a little of a crocodile, floating like deadwood in the water. I try to see its face through the dusty web, but only catch a glimpse of its eight oil-drop eyes. With so many creatures, health is linked to motion and sound, but much of the spider’s life is this stony vigil.
I try to imagine the workings of its bead-sized brain. Is it glowing with sensory awareness, or dormant, lightless until it feels the quiver of a gnat in its thread? Perhaps it’s some of both—sometimes asleep, sometimes wakeful, taking in the web’s tremble, the sun, and the pink glow of petunias outside its cave.
Whatever goes on in its mind—different from my own, but well-suited to its role—I can imagine the pleasure that floods its body when its web quivers, and its legs erupt into motion, rushing out to subdue some poor ant. The web isn’t sticky, but the spider's speed makes up for that.
I’ve seen this creature so frequently, but I never really looked at it. As it turns out, this wasn’t the only grass spider I overlooked, either. Since I started this post, I’ve realized that my porch is rife with spider silk caves. Two of my porch’s corners look like arachnid apartments, each with four to eight cottony floors. There are four more webs around the frame of our screen door, at least fourteen strung up along the porch railings, and even one on the neglected black bristles of our broom.
I’ve sometimes thought that flies must have bad eyesight to get caught in spiderwebs. Now, I feel blind as a fly myself, surrounded by over thirty webs that I’ve been too busy to see. How did I never notice this? Possibly for lack of sweeping.
Still, with my mind so busy all the time, there’s something oddly restful in contemplating these spiders. While I’m caught up in my noisy brain, I’m surrounded by at least thirty-one stilled bodies, stilled minds. Their whole world may be that thoughtless, half-dead anticipation for the tremor of their web, or it may be one of utter focus and awareness, their minds immersed in the trickle of shadows under sunlight, the scarlet flurry and shriek of cardinals, the trembling cadence of the wind through their nest.
Works Cited
Ester, K.J. “Agelenopsis – American Grass Spider.” USASpiders. Accessed 6 July 2020.
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