Gambler

Gambles–especially foolish, futile ones—steal a part of my heart.

It was gloriously autumn this morning, the first really brilliant day of color in glassland, so I flipped up the garage door and set to work.

Or tried to. The first spiders of fall slowed me down quite a bit.

Even among spiders–the natural mathematicians of the invertebrate world–the golden orbs that live around here are something special. Not only are the spiders themselves beautiful, all red-orange, gold, brown and black, but their webs are immaculate geometric visualizations. Theirs are the storybook webs of Halloween, spun between posts and trees and walls and rocks…and sometimes cars.

I’m not a huge fan of spiders in the house (as you’ve probably gathered), but outside, I love them. My sister, a confirmed arachnophobe, doesn’t come near my house in fall; it’s festooned with hundreds of perfect webs and plump little golden spiders hanging from every window. (Suzi says it gives her nightmares just thinking about it)

There are three that live right by the garage door, huge females ripe with eggs, grand old dames weaving their last few strands before the end. They’re capturing those weird stinkbuggy things, wrapping them carefully in silk and storing them away for the children. Their webs sway in the breeze, tracking every movement with all the precision of a sci-viz program, and I can follow the eddies and currents of the air ripple across the stairstepped silk.

There’s a perfect web in the corner of the garage door, magnificently crafted, connected at alternating points across the doorframe. It reminds me of the web wireframe scenes in the movie Coraline, right down to the hole in the center where you usually find the spider usually waits. There’s no spider in this one, though, and the web hangs forlorn and unused.

I’m wondering if its owner was picked off by a bird…but notice a small silk tracery spanning from the garage door to the front bumper of my car. I trace it carefully with my eyes: There, barely visible, sits the spider in another perfect web.

She’s an Olympic-class webspinner, alright; her webs have stretched at least five feet from garage to car. I drove in around 10pm last night, so done this in about 10 hours. Her webs attach to the corner of the front bumper, travel up to the headlight’s rim, and back over to the garage.

They’re stunningly, precisely sectioned, with silk so fine I can only see them at certain angles and can’t photograph them. (I tried) They stretch tautly across the space, starting to move as the breeze kicks up. The spider tenses up and rides the wind like a bucking bronco.

She’s not as big as her sisters who have, more wisely, planted their webs in safer spots. Her webs, though are three times bigger; this is a spider with ambition. She hasn’t caught anything (that I can see), but maybe that’s not her point. Maybe she’s an overachiever, one of those Guinness Book types who just has to prove it can be done.

I set to work on my molds but keep an eye on that spider. She quickly weaves her silk from headlight to license plate; in a couple of hours she’s captured half the bumper of my large sedan. Give her three or four days and I’m pretty sure my car would be wrapped in silk like one of those stinkbuggy things.

It’s tempting to see if she’d really do it.

Unfortunately, I’m out of aluminum hydrate and EPK, and I have six more molds to make to stay on schedule today. I hate to break her heart, but I’ve got to get to Georgie’s across town, and, selfishly, I’m not about to call a cab just to avoid inconveniencing this spider.

I shower slowly, do a few phone calls, take my time, giving her as much time with her prize as I can. When it’s time, I start the car, backing up fast to break her webs cleanly and swiftly.

I think about her while they’re ringing up sacks of powder and goo. On the drive home I wonder if maybe I should have gently removed her from the webs and set her back on the house. Or the ground. Or anyplace but my driveway with big, rolling tires ready to crunch foolish risk-takers.

Then I wonder if maybe I should have my head examined for spending this much time worrying about a bug. (Correction: an arthropod)

Nonetheless, my anthropomorphizing has done its usual headjob guilt-trip. The poor spider could still be languishing, stunned, on the concrete driveway, helpless before my advancing Camry.  I park at the end of the driveway, several feet away from the garage door, dash up the drivway to see if she’s OK.

Whew! She’s on the garage door, sulking under the molding, webs unspun.

This is silly. It’s just a damn spider. As soon as her eggs are laid she’ll be dead. Couple of weeks, tops.

But…”here you go,” I say gently, and edge my car bumper almost to the door, shut off the ignition. “I made it closer for you this time. Won’t take so long.”

As I watch, she slowly starts to spin.