Nature's Place

There are many different grasses in the reserve. One is a firm slender stalk about five feet high with a seed cluster around an inch or two from its pointed tip looking a bit like a pine cone pointing up to the sky. One of these seed pods had a little spider nest built under it, the kind from which the spider darts out to catch its prey. (RIMG0840.JPG) Any prey would have to appear on an area about as wide as a matchstick and as long as a fingernail for the spider to have any chance of catching it.

I didn’t get to see the actual spider but its front legs were visible through the web, touching the strands of web that would transmit news of prey, poised. It’s a curious thing, what would the spider hope to catch in such a small hunting ground. You’d think there would be more fruitful hunting grounds.

You might say spiders don’t hope. It takes its place in the order of things according to its instinct, its innate intelligent connection to the nature around it. Inside. Nature looks after itself, creatures live and die. Everything lives by killing something, and some things die of starvation. But it is amazing to me the spider would be in that spot. That spider’s perfect spot. Maybe it was just nesting, looking after its eggs or tiny young. But I didn’t see anything but the spider when I went to have a closer look the next day. And amazingly it was still there under the seed cluster, sheltered from the rain and sun.

I don’t think there is an ounce of stupidity in the whole of nature. That facility is mans exclusive domain. And man wields it with wild abandon when it comes to nature. Like an angry child running in the garden slashing the heads off all the beautiful flowers. Eventually no more flowers will grow because none were left to seed.

How did we come to this?