Bob’s Spider     PAGE 3

     Guileless creature that she was, she would have let me watch. After all, she didn’t mind letting me see her vomiting digestive juices on her dinner. But I left her instead to the privacy of her cluster of leaves.

     She wove a few more orbs before she went away. A couple of them were nothing short of stunning in their size and beauty. She had become a large lady but she still moved across the face of her web with a quickness that took my breath away.

     There came a time, of course, when she simply showed up no more. It was October 10, and I sensed it wasn’t to be a temporary absence this time. The weather was getting cooler and despite my gifts, food was harder to find.

       The leaves where she’d hidden were empty. Suspended by a thread of her silk even to this day, they remain attached to a bare branch, becoming brown and crumbly, twisting slowly in the autumn breeze like a wind chime that’s gone mute.