As Spring becomes increasingly insistent, the animal world wakes from Winter slumber and prepares to face the world. Mating dances begin. As food becomes more easily found, predators of all sizes begin to hunt in earnest. Spiders are predators. They do not eat plants. As insect life returns to the air the webs begin to appear.
Morning dew glistens like beads on a wire. Scant moments after the rays of dawn sun strike the web the dew starts to evaporate. Within minutes the beads are gone. Leaving only the pretty, but deadly, filaments of silk.
Few things remind me more of the harsh reality of nature. It is indeed red in tooth and claw. At once both beautiful and terrible. Spider webs are intrinsically masterpieces of engineering and design. But also functional. All creatures must eat. And they usually eat each other. Flies caught in a web face a most unenviable fate.
