Not dog related but hope it's OK - Page 1

I know the new mods are more strictly enforcing OT messages, and this may get deleted but here goes...

Some of you may remember photos I posted early this summer of an Orb spider living by my well house. Unlike most spiders, she never moved her web looking for more bountiful hunting grounds but stayed in one spot next to my water hose. Each day when I watered my garden, I'd see her and began to feel a kind of fondness for her.

Many days, I'd catch a particularly fat grasshopper and toss it onto her web. At first, she'd run from my approach, but eventually, she'd sit still until the grasshopper had been ensnared then scurry over to encase it in silk to be snacked on at her leisure. And yes, it sounds silly, but over the months, it almost felt as though we had a kind of friendship.

Then a few days ago, I noticed she laid an egg sac, the second of the summer, and afterward became lethargic. Her web was beginning to get tattered, but she didn't attempt making repairs. The grasshoppers I provided were ignored until their struggles finally freed them from her web, and I knew her life was ebbing as the days shortened into autumn. Then this morning, I found her body where it had fallen lifeless beneath the remaining shimmering  threads of her web. Although some won't understand why, I felt saddened by her passing. Somehow, it makes the approaching winter seem closer.

If this message is inappropriate for the PDB, I apologize.

I love orb spiders and I feel your pain.  They are so beneficial to the garden and their webs are works of art.  Speaking of art, you have a talent for writing.  If you don't write, you should.

It appropriate and nice, at least to me.

Ibrahim

Thanks for that wonderful essay of life and then Death. It is so appropiate as Fall season comes upon us..God sheds the old leaves to make way for the new that is around the corner.

Funny you posted this as I received this in an email about an hour ago...


"God doesn't give you the people you want; He gives you the people or (things) you NEED... to help you, to hurt you, to leave you, to love you and to make you into the person you were meant to be."

Be sure most of us appreciate your posting.

YR

It was Charlotte!  I love the garden spiders too and know what you mean.  Her eggs will hatch in the sping, watch for them!

I enjoyed your writing!  It really made me FEEL the sadness...........

Vickie
www.PowerHausKennels.com

 so sad but kinda nice thank you

When I still lived in West Virginia we also had a well house! on the  sometimes frequent occassions of having to go prime the pump I would encounter orb  spiders and marvell at the beauty of the webs!Also the dried skins of the passing timber rattlers! they would come to kep warm and molt the skins in the fall weather! On those rare occassions I could watch the adolescent spiders actually launch away on the passing breeze.A little spurt of silk and the breeze would carry them away!

          Such sadness.....Come spring her little spider babies will keep your garden company,,,,,,very touching,,,

                                               Deanna...: )

Thank you for the kind words. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and photography with people on this forum. Even with the bickering (or perhaps because of it) the PDB feels a lot like an extended  family; and though we've never met, I think of many of you as friends.

In my professional life, I'm a freelance photojournalist temporarily under contract with a national publication.