Spider Shabbat

[magid]

Yesterday morning when I went out to my sukkah on the porch, there was a huge round spider web, the kind I don't often see here, in all its radial glory. It was about a foot and a half across, and I longed to take a photo, knowing I'd not manage anything that would do it justice anyway. Later on, I found the wind had damaged it some, and it had caught a few things, rather than being just ripped apart in the wind. And when I looked up, there was the mistress of the web herself, a larger spider than I've seen around here before, more than an inch long, with legs banded in black and goldish beige. I had to go over to look, and she obligingly stayed near the center of the web while I did. There were times later in the afternoon as the breezes picked up that she moved out of the center, whether to take advantage of her harvest or to fix her web, I wasn't sure. This morning, the web was still there, apparently fixed from whatever blemishes may have come, though I didn't see the webmistress in residence.