*Arachnophobes
Beware!*
It’s been a bit of a slow week on the textile front due to
various things, but I wanted to share a few thoughts with you.
On Tuesday, I found a garden spider weaving her orb web in
the garden early in the morning. I’ve seen a spider making her web before – and
walked into a few! - but I’ve never actually taken the time to watch properly,
so I stayed to see how she did it. I know she’s a she because she’s fairly big
and the females are bigger than the males.
She’d already done the “spokes” and was in the middle of
creating the sticky spiral, working from the outside to the inside. I hope you
can see her spinning her web in this photo. It was quite a big web!
Just after I took this, a miniscule fly crashed into her web
and she immediately scuttled to the centre. The web bounced a bit, which seemed
to be too big a movement for the tiny fly, so I’m assuming that the spider was
bouncing it to determine where in her web the fly was. Within a few seconds,
she went directly to the fly, untangled it from the wheel of silk and took it
back to the centre. That left a hole where the fly had been. I couldn’t see
whether she ate it or kept it in her mouth to suck the juices from it, but she
didn’t stay there, she carried on with her weaving, like a working breakfast.
Coffee and toast to go! Sorry if you’re a bit squeamish.
While watching her, the story of Robert the Bruce came to
mind, something I haven’t thought about in years. He watched a spider spinning
her web in a cave while he was hiding. To be honest, I couldn’t remember who it
was who took shelter in the cave so I had to look it up. But, while I was doing
that, I found one version of the story that said the spider was trying to climb
the cave wall to get to her web at the top. She kept falling down but tried
again and again to reach her web and eventually succeeded.
This isn’t the version I remembered, so I kept searching and
found another version which said Robert the Bruce watched the spider trying to
spin her web. The first strand she sent out to the other side of the cave
didn’t reach, nor did the second or third, but she kept trying and on the
seventh attempt it worked. This was also not the version I’d heard, but is
similar to it.
From what I remember, the story was that Robert the Bruce
had gone into hiding after his Scottish army had been defeated by the English.
He hid in a cave, thinking about giving up his defence of Scotland and while
there he saw a spider spinning her web at the entrance of the cave. (That’s all
the same so far, but this is where the versions differ.) She made her web but
when it was complete, a strong wind came up and blew it away. She spun another,
but it began to rain heavily and the web was washed away. She created web after
web but even though it kept getting destroyed, the spider determinedly
continued until eventually the sun shone and her web stayed in place. This made
Robert the Bruce realise that he shouldn’t give up. He rallied his army, fought
the English again and won.
The whole point of the story, of course, is that if you’re
determined and keep trying, you’ll succeed in your aim. I did used to wonder
why spiders build their webs where they keep being destroyed, but watching this
one on Tuesday made me realise how they just keep going. Web gets ruined -
never mind, build another one! However many times they need to weave, they
weave.
This, in turn, brought to mind the Nelson Mandela quote:
The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising
every time we fall.
It’s something I think I needed to be reminded of this week,
so I feel grateful to that little spider for being there. It’s not only a
personal thing; with the way the world is at the moment, I really hope the
human race can rise from where it is. ❤
There was a heavy rain on Wednesday night and when I looked
on Thursday morning, the spider had a new web: there were no holes in it where
flies had been caught. Again, yesterday and today, it has rained and last night
her web was reduced to a few strands, but she was still there, near some
leaves. This is her web today:
While I’m on the subject of spiders, and as an extra point
of interest, in Anglo Saxon England, they apparently believed that apprentice
wizards/shamans journeyed to the Otherworld with a Spider Monster while in a
trance to go through their initiation. Another Spider Monster met them when
they arrived and the shaman would have to prove he knew his stuff. It’s thought
that the spiders represented the Wyrd Sisters who wove the web of life. I read
this in The Real Middle Earth, Magic and
Mystery in the Dark Ages by Brian Bates.
I used to be arachnophobic and here I am writing about
spiders. But as much as I’ve found a new respect for spiders, I don’t think I’d
like to go through that initiation! 😉😊
