Empathy with Shelob

These are bad days for us arachnophobes.  Wherever I venture past my front door, I'm forced to contend with the increasingly gigantic webs of garden spiders.  One web totally blocked the rear door leading to my back deck.  Another was suspended across the walkway from my front porch.  A third spanned my driveway, barring access to my garbage can.

We are told that these same spiders have been around for months.  But only now, as summer ends and fall begins, have they grown large enough to create a serious nuisance.  Only now do I jump as I spot them squatting complacently in the center of their webs, awaiting their prey.  Only now have I begun cringing away from imaginary or not-so-imaginary webs lying in my path each time I leave the house.

But as the word arachnophobia suggests, I merely have an unreasonable and instinctive fear of spiders; I don't hate the eight-legged beasts.  In fact, I rather admire them.  I admire them to the point that I'm loath to disturb their webs, despite the inconvenience those webs present, and the shivers they perhaps induce.

The webs are miracles of engineering, created by small creatures with simple nervous systems, unable to see farther than a few inches in front of their faces (had they faces), and capable (we presume) of acting only by instinct.  They laboriously excrete and send out into the wind silken strands that stick to surrounding branches, often several feet away, and then begin the laborious process of producing their Halloweenish orb webs.  The webs require a lot of protein as building material, and the process of building the webs consumes a lot of energy.  When the web is broken and cannot be quickly repaired, the spider is apt to eat the remaining remnants -- to restore its stock of protein -- before beginning once again.

The spider can live for a surprisingly long time without food, but sooner or later, if the hunting has not been good, she'll die of starvation.  Typical garden spiders -- the ones that concern me at this time of year -- live only one season, and die with the first frost.  Their lives, if not cut short by accident or predation, consist of hatching, spinning, mating ("externally") and then consuming their mate as a post-coital snack, extracting the juices from whatever prey fortuitously brushes up against their web, and then, in the end, dying of hypothermia.

A spider's life, as Thomas Hobbes might have put it, is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

So I anthropomorphize the little buggers.  They work harder that I do, or than anyone I know does.  They patiently rebuild their webs over and over, as each web is destroyed by acts of God or of men, a patience that famously inspired Robert Bruce of Scotland.  They have no aspirations.  They ask only to live long enough to produce little spiders -- who in turn will have no greater aspirations of their own -- and then die.  Not for them a quiet cup of coffee, while enjoying their garden.  Not for them the love of happy grandchildren.  Not for them a seeking for the good, the true, and the beautiful.  Not for them moments in which to philosophize on the meaning of it all.

It's a hell of a life, a spider's life.  I don't envy them.  And their lives resemble all too closely the lives led by all too many of our fellow humans.  I empathize with spiders, even as a loathe them.

I wouldn't kick a starving peasant out of my path, would I?  Hence the bizarre spectacle I make of myself as I leave the house or take out the garbage -- tip-toeing about, ducking and weaving, trying insofar as possible not to disturb the giant webs that obstruct me.  Avoiding -- except when totally necessary -- the easy option of brushing the web aside with a stick, opening a lane of travel for my own convenience.

Bless you, you ugly little devils.  The quickly-approaching first frost will soon end your sad lives. Enjoy these last sunny days while you can.