Photo: Spider

Photo by Mike Remarcke

There are still a few of the orb weavers around, waiting to set up their egg sacs and die. They are all named "Charlotte" of course. In the meantime, they are catching and eating lots of small, annoying flying creatures. From the damage to the center of her web, she caught at least one creature this day.

They tear down their webs and create a new one every morning. The guy wires that anchor the webs are, relatively speaking, stronger than steel. I once saw a spider anchor her line to my small fruit tree. The line, glittering in the sunlight, stretched up and over 50 feet to the top of my neighbor's tall maple. That must have been some ride down!

DKH