Nature Talks.

There’s a large orb web at the corner of our house. It’s dark now when I get up in the mornings and I see it in the light. Since the year is winding down the spider in it—which I’m pretty sure is an Aranea cavatica—is stepping up her efforts. It’s not an accident that their webs become more visible at this time of year, or that the crickets seem to get a little louder, the bees a little bolder. This is their last chance.

Last year I wrote about finding three Aranea cavaticas in my yard and, as a tribute to Charlotte’s Web, I named them Joy, Aranea, and Nellie. The one at the corner of the house this year is Charlotte, and next year the cycle will begin again with Joy.

After all these years spiders still fascinate me, and after all these years it still surprises me that they don’t fascinate other people as much. When I pick up a spider in the house my wife usually says the same thing: “Put it outside. No, put it outside. No, I don’t want to see it. Don’t bring it over here. PUT IT OUTSIDE.”

Intellectually I do understand why most people don’t like spiders. It’s all the legs and the way they move. And the fact that some spiders bite. Some people say it’s the multiple eyes but if you don’t like spiders you’re probably not going to get close enough to see its eyes.

In spite of the widespread dislike there’s a whole web of folkore that’s grown up around spiders. Historically spider webs were, and occasionally still are, used as bandages. Maybe it was the silky nature that prompted this use but scientists have found there are antibiotic properties in spider silk. There’s the belief that it’s bad luck to kill a spider, and there’s some truth in that. If you find a spider in your home think about what it’s probably eating.

Then there’s the Tarantella dance that might have originated with the belief that the bite of a certain spider was poisonous and could only be cured by dancing. The likely arachnid was a wolf spider whose bite is harmless to people but I guess people thought they needed an excuse to dance. Some scholars think people used the Tarantella dance as an excuse to have sex and, hey, I’m not sure why you need an excuse, but that does throw a whole new light on Little Miss Muffett and why she dragged her tuffet outside, but that’s another story.

Maybe deep down spiders also give us a sense of our own mortality. As I said spider webs, and the spiders that make them, get bigger as the year winds down. It’s a reminder of time slipping away—although in my yard at least Joy will always come around again.

Every year, usually in the early fall, somewhere in our yard I find a large orb weaver, an Aranea Cavatica. This is the time when they’re at their largest and their webs are biggest which makes me a little sad because it means they’re nearing the end of their life; the size and prominence of their webs reflects a special urgency. This year, glowing with light reflected from under the eaves, I found three side by side, all extending from the ground to the same branch nearly six feet up. And I said, “Hello Aranea, Joy, and Nellie,” and if you’ve read Charlotte’s Web you’ll understand that reference, especially if you’ve read it as many times as I have.

The real life spider who inspired E.B. White’s novel by building a web in his barn just above where he was nursing a sick piglet, was also an Aranea Cavatica, which is why, every time I find one, it reminds me of this scene from the book:

“What are you doing up there, Charlotte?”

“Oh, making something,” she said. “Making something, as usual.”

“Is it something for me?” asked Wilbur.

“No,” said Charlotte. “It’s something for me, for a change.”

“Please tell me what it is,” begged Wilbur.

“I’ll tell you in the morning,” she said. “When the first light comes into the sky and the sparrows stir and the cows rattle their chains,when the rooster crows and the stars fade, when early cars whisper along the highway, you look up here and I’ll show you something. I will show you my masterpiece.”

I always think Charlotte sounds a little testy when she tells Wilbur she’s making something for herself, and she should. She’s spent so much of the summer devoted to saving Wilbur’s life she’s almost forgotten her own. A spider’s life is only a fraction of a pig’s. And you know, if you’ve read Charlotte’s Web, that her masterpiece is her egg sac, that in the spring, like so many spiders, she’ll have hundreds of children whom she’ll never see. Three of them stay behind to watch over Wilbur, though he doesn’t need it anymore.

That’s why I usually go through a four-year cycle naming the spiders I find but this year finding three lady Cavaticas all in one place forced me to move things up a little. The one I find next year, if I find only one, will have the same name as the one I found in the fall of 2017. She will be Charlotte.