Spiders

I was in my back yard the other day, taking a nap in the warm sun. True...it is nearing mid-November but this fact doesn't stop the weather where I live from being 75 degrees without a cloud in the sky. I like it that way. So anyway, I was sitting on this nice reclining chair that I have in my backyard, my eyes getting heavier and heavier, when I happen to glance straight up at a plane going overhead. It was a rather loud plane and in my mind I was pretending to shoot it down because it had woke me up out of that 'nearly asleep' state. I might have even made a "pew pew" noise with my mouth for effect. As it passed overhead, my eyes refocused on this thing in between me and the sky. A fat spider. Huge. Gross. Hairy. Orange. I got out of the chair very quickly, and was certainly wide awake.

Now I keep it no secret that I'm not exactly a fan of spiders. I would even go so far as to say that I have slight arachnophobia. I mean, sure, I have been around long enough to realize that little spiders aren't going to come hunting for me just so they can bite me and give me welts and/or kill me with their venom, but I still don't like them in close proximity to me. The more I think about it, the more I realize that it's not the fact of seeing a spider that truly scares me. I start to get freaked out when I have just seen it a couple minutes ago, and when I look back, it's gone.

Like I was saying, this happened a couple days ago, and I went back into my yard today. I remembered that there was a spider, so I went to go check to see if it was still there. To my great relief, it was. Literally in the exact same spot as before. The only evidence that it had ever moved was that there was some unlucky insect all wound up in the web, the juices no doubt sucked from him already. I like to think about nature and animal instincts and such, (Yes, even spiders)so I began to ponder the spider's life.

She is born. She makes a web. Sits there for a while. Sits there some more. Catches a bug. Remakes the web. Catches another bug. Sits there some more. Sits there some more. And Some more. And some more. Other than the fact that they might chase me around sometimes, or get eaten by birds--I really couldn't think of anything else that spiders do. Sure, I know that they are an important part of our ecosystem because they take care of pests, etc. etc. blah blah, but after I realized that those few things were all that the spider's life consisted of, I felt kind of depressed. After it makes a web, it kind of just sits around doing literally nothing for twenty three hours and fifty five minutes per day. It uses the other 5 to feed.

Are spiders content to just sit there and wait all day doing nothing until it eats? I know my dog isn't content to do that, and neither am I. I guess I am just happy that there is more to my life than eating and sleeping. Don't get me wrong, I love both those things, but to quote Hamlet, "What is a man if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more..." I kinda feel like I should be living with a little bit extra excitement, just for all the spiders who have to sit around doing nothing, just waiting for their food all day.