I took the dog out and while she furiously hunted voles at liberty in the pasture, I watched a little spider crawling along the top wire of the fence. Then I realized that ahead of it was another spider and was instantly like #SPIDER FIGHT but NofNA did not happen, they just sidled/hastened past each other, the one I was following just kept truckin’. It encountered several more spiders, each of a different species, along the way; eventually it got to the spencepost (spider fencepost), at which point, the thought I’d been having, namely, “the world is full of spiders,” became “THE WORLD IS FULL OF SPIDERS,” because there were a whole bunch more tiny spiders on that fencepost. All of them different species! Lotta jumping spiders. Those are my faves, because the old adage is “spiders are so small they have no idea you even exist,” but jumping spiders absolutely know that you exist when you come within jumpin’ distance, and will look at you. Perhaps not at... you-you... but then again... who knows what they see...
Anyway all the spiders slice-of-life’d it up for a bit--nice hot sunshine and cool gentle breeze for metabolizing and thermoregulating in--which included protag spider clambering awkwardly over a ballooning spider and getting “EY! EY!!!”’d away with a handswaving display, the ballooning spider spooling out more and more and more and more thread until eventually being whisked away and getting MAD airtime, one of the jumping spiders hopping from the fencepost down onto the top wire RIGHT before my eyes(!!!), and protag spider trekking all the way back the way it came to go hang out in the shade on the underside of the wire there.Â
Also I stood still for long enough that eventually the vole Bell was hunting came hastening (YES I already used this word, im using it again) down the hill, crossed the fence by me within a yard of my feet, and exited stage left into the soy field. godspeed tiny gentlevoleÂ
