Speaking to Spiders

Spiders were once sea creatures, climbing onto land about 100 million years ago and teaching themselves how to hunt very efficiently by spinning webs and then sitting and waiting, and they've since mastered the art. These elegant creatures have three separate spinneret nozzles in their abdomens: one for spinning non-sticky "framing" thread for their webs; one for sticky thread that catches their prey; and one that's a safety or parachuting line.

These threads -- for their size, strong as steel -- are made of protein and water. A spider needs both protein and water to keep spinning, and when necessary will eat its own web to build up energy for a new one. The orange-red artist in my photo lives on the corner of my garage where my car's headlights every evening give a minute of light while I get out of the car and raise the garage door. The first night I saw the illuminated web, the spider fled to a dark corner. I said "Don't worry. I won't hurt you." It took me at my word and now we are partners. I provide light by night that attracts moths and things into the spider's web.

The daddy long legs spider -- always close to the house because it likes water -- a year ago fell in love with a scrub brush that I left outside, and they had something in common, but this year it has the hots for half a geode, unfortunately destined to be unrequited love, but I said nothing, figuring it should be allowed to enjoy its fantasy world. I wished it much happiness, and went indoors back into my web and my fantasy world.

The Ten O'Clocker

It happened again tonight: About 10 p.m. a car pulls up at my house. I'm sitting where I can't see it; I can only feel its vibrations through the floor; then the car door slams. I'm not expecting anyone. Nobody just "drops by" here on a friendly visit, not at 10 p.m.

This happened before, in November, on a Saturday at the same hour. Someone knocked at the screen door, then did it again, harder, rattling it, when I did not answer. I called out "Who is it?" and got no reply. I called out again; still no answer. To my horror, I was rooms away from my phone and saw that I'd left the door unlocked. Insulation blocked all but two of my windows so I couldn't see out or see the car. So I hid. The car left. After a while I triple-locked the door and found my phone and kept it near.

Then the car came back and whoever it was knocked again. I had no enemy unless you count a student whose creative writing described the use of firearms and car bombs, the first student in my 29 years of teaching who, that same week, aware of the penalties, grossly insulted his classmates, and when rebuked, replied very unpleasantly. This time I phoned 911. The deputy arrived 15 minutes later, but the car was gone. I hadn't seen it, or the visitor, so couldn't describe them.

Tonight, when I heard a car pull up unannounced and then a slam and a knock, I secured a certain item and accessories I now keep handy, and with a body hardened by fight training and judo crawls, lay low with my phone where I couldn't be seen, with the item trained on the door. I didn't ask who it was. I simply waited.

Smiles on a Summer Night

The July just past was the fourth-hottest July on record in this area, and the hottest since 1936, and August is the same, and this is God's way of telling the people of Missouri to enjoy the hot darkness and slurp up icy things before bedtime. There's something wonderful about neon lights in August advertising icy stuff. The SnoBiz stand, a tiny six feet wide and 12 feet long, is shuttered all winter behind the grocery store and so nondescript I don't even see it, but it comes alive with fun lights and people on summer nights, and finally -- because life is too short to be such a hardass as to lecture myself, "I don't need sweet icy stuff on an August night" -- stopped in about 10 p.m. when it was still 85 degrees, and bought a lemon-meringue ice (a staff recommendation) just so I could take a photo.

It was incredibly tasty for a cup of shaved ice and placated my inner seven-year old who vowed that after she got her own purse and money and could stay up past 8:30 she wouldn't ever pass up an ice cream store, ice-cream truck, ice-cream sandwich, slurpee, or sno-cone. (Wasn't any frozen yogurt in those days. In Harvard Square, in Cambridge, Mass., is a plaque honoring the place that the first frozen yogurt was made and sold in 1971.)

Route 66 Stop and the Supermoon

Taken March 20, 2011, on Old Route 66 in Lebanon, MO. First full moon at perigee in 20 or so years. Moon appears 8 percent larger than normal (the "supermoon").

Open House

The kitchen door and screen here aren't flush with the doorjamb. Underneath and through those doors have slunk and marched and flown all sorts of creatures, right into my house like they owned the place. In October, spiders creep in to take refuge for the winter. I once had a Halloween dinner for family and it was as if I had ordered spiders to walk across the room every minute as a party favor.

Mouse settled in and stashed an ounce or two of cracked corn in the toe of a boot I don't often wear. That same year a mouse (the same frugal mouse?) made a silo in the ring-binding of my Betty Crocker cookbook. During a really hard winter when all food is secured against mice, they scratch at and eat my Ivory soap. In the pantry closet, just last month, a mouse chewed a stack of 250 table napkins to shreds and built a fabulous nest of them.

Wasps buzz indoors and sleep or build nests all winter up in a window frame. I found one who drowned in a jar of honey (I'd lost the cap and topped it with saran wrap and a rubber band; the wasp broke its way through). They sleep all winter in window frames, and in spring wake up trapped behind the plastic window insulation. The question is, how do I free them and direct them out of the house without getting stung? (I'd squash them, but they get really aggressive when I try!!)

During the drought of 2006, a lizard in search of water came in beneath the door and spent two weeks residing in the laundry room. I grew fond of him and named him Harrison.

Moths flutter in starting in August, planning to eat my clothes and blankets, and I chase 'em but rarely catch 'em. Once, though, I was boiling some sugar water for hummingbird nectar, and a moth flew right into it and boiled to death. I said to it, "What were you thinking?"

Woke up on a very rainy night, and there in the bathroom was a foot-long blacksnake in who probably came in under the kitchen door so he/she would not be drowned. Night crawlers, plain earthworms, fuzzy caterpillars and large centipedes do this also. These I pick up and throw outside.

Every year a "walking stick" comes and hangs on the screen door at eye level. Clearly he wants my attention. I tell him thanks, but he's not my type. Then he changes his color, comes back and looks hopeful: "Is this more your type?"

Somebody cut the kitchen door wrong long ago -- looks as if it was done with a handsaw -- just about a half-inch too high, and curved -- and it can't be fixed.

Full Moon in Libra

Life here is so fun. I come home in my suit after 12 hours' work and see the full moon rising over the woods to the northeast. Run to get camera and tripod. Go out into the field & shoot photos for half an hour. Then have seven marshmallows for dinner. That's the way to wind down. I wish you had been with me. Maybe you'll be here for next full moon in Scorpio, and I'll obsessively make us addictive s'mores?

Snowstorm at Night

Snow last night and today made it nearly impossible to get out of here; I tried but the snow packed my tires like wet sugar. So I turned back and then couldn't get the car up the driveway without a shovel and cat litter. However, I did do it. Tonight stepped outside where snow was falling straight and fast and I could hear it like a whisper. I could also hear spinning tires as other folks around here tried to go places. With the floodlight on I saw bunny tracks. The photo shows my bird feeder strung from an oak. January is almost over. Yay.

Good Fortune

Had to show you this photo I just took, although I hope you saw it "live" -- of tonight's conjunction of Jupiter, Venus, and the moon. In astrology this night is considered very lucky. Hope it is for you. I set the camera on "infinity" and went for it. And happy December -- the month with the prettiest name.

Treasures in Heaven

Tonight -- dry, clear, and a teeth-chattering 17 degrees -- our area was able to enjoy the only total eclipse of the moon we will see here until 2010. This photo was taken about 20 minutes before totality. Wins my daily Oscar for best performance by the sky. Runner-up: a huge flock of Canada geese pouring eastward, sounding like woodwinds.

Busy Beavers

Beaver dams create deep diving pools that are inconvenient for their predators. Here's the new beaver dam on the creek, and a close-up of a slender branch they lopped and stripped with their teeth. The bark was food; the stick is building material. Back in '01 on a moonlit night a friend and I crept down to the creek and watched a beaver clan at work.

It sounds like: Crunch crunch crunch crunch, Ker-PLOOP! (that's one of the beavers diving into the creek). He or she then swims silently, along with the current, head above the water, nosing along a branch, either stripped or with bark. He or she gets it to the dam area, and the engineer beavers take over from there.

The last beaver dam here was built in 2001; it was three times this size, strong enough to walk across the creek on, and so tightly built a branch could hardly be pulled from it. The beavers of '01 felled trees a foot in diameter (crunch crunch crunch) and permanently changed the course of the creek. A torrential flash-flood destroyed their dam and they moved on, and there haven't been any more until this year. They work mostly with slender new trees, so this dam isn't quite as spectacular. A conservation guy told me not to worry about the fallen trees, because if beavers chewed them down, that was nature.