Thursday, July 16, 2015

Spiderettes? Spiderlings? Spetite?

     I don't know what to call them and the moment was fleeting.  I went out to the garage this morning and scattered across the back yard, I saw what looked like tiny, insubstantial patches of fog, nestled in the grass.  If I got too close to any one of them, it vanished.

     From the back door, with the sun at my back, I could see many of them and I took a bearing on one of the thicker-looked.  At medium distance, it appeared to fade away, and even looking start down on it, it was barely perceptible.  Bending down, I finally saw it again at bifocal distance: the thinnest of spderwebs, woven of strands so fine they glimmered like elongated rainbows.  There was no sign at all of the web-spinner, but if it is sized proportionately, the little spider would be about the size of a dust-mote.

     What do they seine from the morning air, do you suppose?

8 comments:

NotClauswitz said...

Sounds like the wee spiders I see here in the grass, out behind the prairie, early in the AM.

Sigman said...

I'd guess gnats. Anything much bigger would destroy the web. I see them here in TN also. Its almost like they make several like a trapper.

Tam said...

I imagine them as terribly industrious and optimistic little things, setting to work in the pre-dawn dark, hoping for a morning haul.

Merle said...

Could it have been their mode of transportation? Some spin webs and ride the air currents to strike out for new territory.

Merle

Ritchie said...

"Song of the Sky" Guy Murchie

Roberta X said...

Do you allege plagarism, Ritchie?

Anonymous said...

Dwarf Sheet web Spiders... weather has probably caused a population explosion...

Anonymous said...

Dwarf sheetweb spiders (Erigonidai, or a similar latin bashing-together of letters