Monday 17 August 2015

sampler or some pig

My mother shared with me this striking photo- graph of a rather inti- midating spider she spied in her garden. I’d seen such a big spider, called an argiope (silver- faced and named after a water nymph), once before, for whom a humming-bird or minnow wouldn’t be out of its weight-class (predators take on weird, liminal proportions when they’ll take on something bigger than a fly and especially with its doubled-up pouncing stance that announces it’s beyond the arthropods and in fact quadrupedal) but the web its weaved is particularly striking. I wonder whether the distinct zig-zag pattern, the signature I learnt of a male of the species, represents a kind of stitching sampler (and may well come to spell out something, like Charlotte’s Web, or suitable for framing or a throw-pillow), a repair to damage caused by some bumbling giant, or reinforcement executed with foresight. Any answer is pretty remarkable.