The Origami Spider

We have had a terrible summer in Colorado. We have those every few years. So far we have only had 2 or 3 days that it didn't rain. It's been wreaking havoc on my sinus's. But it's been wonderful for our water shortage. We have hardly had to water the grass at all.

With the wet weather comes a whole variety of creepy crawly little critters that decide they would be happier in my house where it's dry. I think most people have a dislike for creepy crawlies. While I am not opposed to killing something that comes in my house, if I find it outside I tend to leave it alone with the notable exceptions of earwigs and the legions of ants I talked about in a previous post.

But the other day I noticed a spider web in the corner of my back door frame. It was on the outside. I noticed it when I turned on the porch light to let the dogs out. The light hit it and illuminated it against the dark sky. It was incredibly intricately woven. More so than any spiderweb I have ever seen. I had a momentary mental flash to Charlotte's Web. I didn't see it's spinner any where though.

The next day we had a terrible house rocking rain/wind/thunder/lightning storm. I noticed the delicately woven web had been torn away by the storm. The next night I was surprised to see another web had been spun in it's place. This time it was occupied however.

I have never seen a spider like this one before. It was average size, nearly all white and had the oddest shaped body I have ever seen. It's body was shaped like one of those origami boxes that you blow into and puff up after you fold it.

Despite the fact that it rather gave me chills to look at it, it was kind of fascinating. However I noticed that the web was partially attached to the door and I didn't want this thing to come into my house. So when R got up I asked him to get rid of it. Because I had visions of getting it caught in my hair if I did it. (Over the years I have had three spiders caught in my hair and it still gives me the willies to even think about it.)

A few years ago I saw a show on TV where they had created a maze out of pipes with quite a few dead ends. They had put a spider at one end, and a fly at the other. The spider sat there for a few moments not moving. Then she set out, she made it all the way across the maze to the fly without a single misstep or wrong turn. The scientists studying the spiders behavior didn't really have an answer for how she did it. They just knew she did it every time. They also said that spiders can live for years. Some varieties in the Amazon can live up to 100 years. I was surprised to find that out, I assumed they were short lived like most other bugs.

I have noticed in my own dealings with some of them that seem to possess a pretty high intelligence level for something with such a tiny brain, or at very least a keen instinct for survival.

R was going to kill my little friend, and I asked him not to. Instead he took a bowl with a lid and moved him over to the tree where there would be plenty of bugs to be caught in a web. I know that might seem sort of silly. It was one spider right?

But it had just as much right to life as anything else, and how I could put an end to something that could spin such a beautiful work of art. I felt good about it as I went to sleep. I had heard long ago that white spiders are good luck, but perhaps the luck was gifted upon my little crawly friend when he chose my house to spin his web instead.