Banana-spiders.

That's what W calls those large yellow spiders that I've been seeing all over the place: banana-spiders. Sounds like such a funny name, till you look closely at the spider, which I've done. The body of this spider is long and yellow, and it curls down a bit at the end, sort of like a banana. The webs they weave are very strong, and they stand up to a good wind, and even a blast from the garden hose. (Guilty as charged.)

As long as I know where the webs are, and if they're not in the middle of a path that we (I) have to walk on day in and day out, then I will just leave the web alone. One good thing about this particular spider-- they're so huge that you can't miss them, and you'd have to be just about legally blind to walk into one.

This morning as I watered the flowers around the fountain, I checked to make sure the yellow spiders were still in their webs along the fence. Four of them have made enormous webs there, and three of the four now have huge sacks attached to the webbing. I put the hose down and walked up for a closer look. One of the spiders saw me and twitched its legs a little bit. I told her to relax, I wasn't going to bother her, I just wanted a look-see. (I've tacked a female pronoun to the spiders, because of E.B. White's book "Charlotte's Web.")

There in the web was a neatly tied bundle, about the size of a very large green grape. If you turned this sack upside-down, it would look like a balloon, just waiting for a string to be tied to its bottom, which comes down to a point... nearly egg-shaped, these sacks. I am guessing that the sack is filled with eggs. Oh goodie. I can only imagine how many eggs a spider can lay at one time. One thousand? Eight thousand? Will I have all those baby banana-spiders making nests around our property after they hatch?

I have seen our chickens eat spiders... they have plucked them right from their webs, if the webs were close enough to the ground, like underneath the rose bushes. But these banana-spiders tend to built their nests up high--- the better to catch crickets and grasshoppers, which I have seen caught in those giant webs. I was outside near the coop when a green and yellow cricket landed in the banana-spider's web at the side of the garage. One mighty leap from the cricket (who was trying to get out of my way) and he landed about three inches below the spider as it waited in his web. (Talk about room service. Web service?)

That spider wasted no time..... two seconds later, he was on top of that cricket and its long legs were hugging that cricket as if it were a long-lost cousin. I didn't wait around to watch the rest of the festivities, but I did make a point to look at that web later on in the day. There was precious little left of that cricket... just enough for a late-night snack in case the spider's web didn't catch anything else till morning.

Nature: The Great Educator. It has been a lesson every day, for all the days we have been here. Granted, some of these lessons I could have done without, but when all is said and done, this property has given me a new-found respect for all creatures and critters, great and small, flying and crawling, pouncing and devouring.