You and Me and Rain on the Roof

Since the forecast is for rain off and on all day, Denny and I are just doing piddly little things around the rig. The estate sale is over and the packing up for charity has to wait until the family removes whatever remaining property they want to keep. So my mom has given us a couple of days off--yay!

Denny's evening down-time is watching the Cincinnati Reds ball games while mine has been my evening perambulations with Patches.Hmm, that could be a whole 'nother series of blogs in itself--"Perambulations with Patches", like "Travels with Charley". Nah, that's been done.

I should have taken my camera on our walk the other night. While wandering the creek bed with the setting sun finding holes in the tree cover, the sunlight suddenly highlighted the work-in-progress of what I believe might have been a mangora gibberosa. This lovely creature (I know, I know, how can a spider be lovely?) was a brilliant emerald green in the light, with a bright yellow marking on her belly that glowed metallic gold. Patches was preoccupied with the scent of something-or-other, so I had the opportunity to watch the engineering marvel of web-building in progress. Each sticky silk thread of the circle was placed precisely 1/8 of an inch from the last, strung between cross-members that were also equidistant from each other. I watched in amazement as this small orb-weaver circled quickly around and around, building her trap in an elegant warp and weave movement that sparkled and bounced with her motions. The five inch in diameter web itself was suspended between two tree branches that were two feet apart, held by long spider guy wires.

Patches was ready to move along, so I made a mental note of the location of the spider web to be able to check on it the next day. Of course, after twenty-four hours,the web had served its purposed and the spider had obviously snagged a
couple meals because the web itself was mangled in several spots. By the third day, the web was looking pretty ratty. It will be interesting to see how long it takes before the spider creates another web to start the process again.

By now, some of you are probably feeling a little buggy and itchy, right? But when the sun shines through the trees and I see a spider web fifty feet up in the air, stretched between branches twelve feet apart and glowing with theiridescence of
fine crystal, I can't help but admire not only the beauty of what a spider has created but marvel at how he got from there-to-there to get that web up there in the sky.

Yeah, I guess I'm weird.