Sunday, July 12, 2009

FIELD NOTES: The eye is sometimes the lens best suited for the subject…


Sunday morning musing

…and so it goes for spiders in the night. Charlotte has become our nightly fascination and has even found converts among us. I discovered my daughter (who is ‘grossed out’ by bugs of any sort) trying to best me with her camera shots, but joined me in stronger appreciation for professional nature photographers instead. She also called out the window one afternoon when I drove into the driveway that it was alright to use the front door because the web had blown away. I sensed that we both felt some sort of remorseful gladness. We don’t really ‘like’ spiders; small spiders tend to get squished when they appear in the bed or bath, but Charlotte is BIG. She is big in more ways than one. Initial suggestions were made to perhaps relocate her so we could actually use our new front door, but the nightly lantern, the gutter and close proximity to the garden seems to be an ideal encampment. Wanting to spread appreciation, the teacher in me called the little neighbor boy over to see The Great Web that had stayed intact for most of Wednesday. He was properly fascinated and returned later with a friend…(Ah, a taste of the old days!...B.C. - before computers - when every kid was an entrepreneur by ‘charging admission’ to anything that constituted a ‘show’). So as we continue to use the garage or back door, kudos to Charlotte for her tour de force; it was difficult to use the front entry on a summer’s night anyway because the screen door is usually loaded with moths, Japanese beetles and the like. I counted twelve ‘packets’ in her web last night and watched as more unfortunates careened into the sticky trap for the love of lamplight…Love is blind?

1 comment:

  1. I really love when things like this happen. It just makes it extra special when our enthusiasm for something captures the imagination of everyone around us. Those are the happiest times.

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