What luck her brood has. For this mother wrote the book on maternal devotion. She doesn’t just follow the ancient call. She leads it. She thrusts it heavenward by her example. Just watch her. See her lay such a monumental clutch of eggs. See her swaddle them in that web casing that may as well be steel, for it is impenetrable to the spider’s winged and multi-legged peers among the insects, worms and caterpillars of her world. Now see her on her true patrol. The idle summer watches in her solitary web are leisurely memories. Now she has her purpose and she is a paragon example of protector and provider.

Days now shorten and grow wilder and colder. Still she mans the windy web, the rain drenched web; and with her egg sac tucked nearby, she is a fearsome guardian, even as her stature imperceptibly begins to shrink, even as her brilliant patterns and colors begin to fade towards duller browns and grays. Then the test is on. Then, as the sun’s heat fails to warm the days, the real fires of motherly endeavor are truly tested by the cold, cold nights. There are no more blue-bottle flies about—swarming gnats, all dead. Yet still she builds. Her webs become more crooked with the passing days. Yet still she spins. Until, at long last, her dining days are done. The wind is biting. On a few nights, frost has come. She clings to her final post. She will not leave the spot. She eats no more. She spins no more. She does not one thing for week after bitter week but to persist. Tenacity, thy name is a garden spider—a spider with motherhood in her blood and not one cheerful thing left in her own short future.

Photo: a common garden spider (Photo subject in Tim & Debra’s neighborhood, Aug. 2009)