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Spiders from Mars

Spider-warm early September and the garden is inaccessible beyond the back door with sheaths of web shining in the sun.  Like meteorites frozen within the brief exposure time of a world-size camera on their fall to Earth, spiders, bloated black stones are unmoving against the blue, interrupted by the unexpected occasional time-lapse progress of a few inches as prey entangle themselves.

Predators are so objectionable, particularly us humans with our great machinery of invisible animal slaughter. The spider by the front door managed to cocoon a moth four times its size, it has become a giant trophy it inspects, and its own body swelling impossibly bigger.  When I noisily open the door it scuttles clumsily away from its victim like a naughty obese child disowning its morbid curiosity at what it has done, I am laughing.