A thousand little sarahs

It has been a while since I last saw Sarah, my favorite maverick spider.

Her tenure as matron of my light pole seems to have ended a few weeks ago.

I began to suspect something was awry when I saw her curled in her web, no longer repairing it diligently like she had been.

Every day she had rewoven the web exactly as it had been before wind and rain had blown large holes in it almost nightly.

She also caught things, and, as far as I could tell, wrapped them up in little pouches for safe keeping.

And then a funny thing happened. One of them burst open, and out came thousands of little Sarahs, attached to long strings that caught the wind.

With the spiders no more than glowing specs under the light of lamp, the sight was almost beautiful.

Soon after the first batch hatched, however, Sarah seemed to lose interest in her web. And then the second batch came, and she seemed to do nothing more than hang out all day.

And then she stopped moving.

That was sort of when I became concerned. She didn't curl up, exactly, she just sort of laid there, if spiders can lay, listlessly.

And then one day she was gone.

After that, one more batch of spider babies came forth. And presumably most of them caught a wind and left. I thought perhaps one or two would hang out in the light pole, to reweave Sarahs web. But none have yet.

There's just one remnant stuck in the corner now. But, every day I check it to see if there are any repairs.

And maybe when someone new takes it up I will be equally touched and creeped out, once again. At any rate, I will probably still be fascinated.

Perhaps this explains why Charlotte's Web was my favorite book when I was younger. I don't know.