Story-A-Day #160: Spider

SPIDER

She was walking downtown, wandering through the cool spring evening when the glowing orange orb of the rising moon caught her attention. It was a majestic site and she crossed the street, angling towards the side of the nearby museum to catch a better glimpse.

As she neared the far corner of the museum, she was so focused on the gleaming moon in the distance that she almost didn’t see it.

A tiny spider skittered spastically across a swaying, silken web.

She didn’t like spiders, but she didn’t hate them either. In fact, there was something she respected about their industrious nature and the incredibly artistic symmetry they were able to weave out their asses. She had once been told that was where the webs came from, and since she had never been close enough to learn any different, she was comfortable believing it to be true.

She watched as the spider slowly stretched out its spindly legs, making its way from strand to strand across the gentle spiral of the trap it was setting.

Trap. There was something interesting in that concept as well. Spiders were obviously industrious, but they did so in the name of laziness. They invested so much time and energy into weaving their tangled webs, only so that they wouldn’t have to hunt for food. Why hunt for food, when you can have it come to you. In a way, it was the insect equivalent of takeout. Even though spiders were not technically insects…

What would she do with a web? Would she use it to catch her pizza delivery girl or the old man who brought her Chinese food in a steaming brown paper bag? Was that even the same thing as what the spider was doing?

Maybe she would have to catch fruit and vegetables, because even if she caught a cow, she would have to cook it to eat it. She supposed that in a sense, fishermen were doing what the spider did, using their nets to pull in the catch of the day. Would a spider look at a fly and think catch of the day?

A small gust of wind tossed the web like a billowing sail. The spider held fast, none of its pile of eyes even flinching. It looked like the spider had been through this all before; like this was just another mild annoyance.

She finally snapped from her reverie, the moon once again drawing her eyes skyward. She would leave the spider to its business, and get back to hers.