Big Charlotte was hanging in during the horrible windstorm we had a few weeks ago. I checked on her a few times – not that I could help, just to see – and she was clinging to the shredded web, nestled down in the mint. A day or so later, they came to cut the grass while I was at work and when I returned she was gone. I wondered if the grass people had ripped up her web or killed her or something… Such a large bug is sometimes too great a temptation for immaturity, and the impulse to HULK SMASH cannot be overcome. Maybe they thought such a big yellow and black spider was poisonous? I don’t know if that’s what happened for sure. But all my writing spiders seem to have gone.
A bit later, we had a much smaller Charlotte appear, build a web, then vanish.
I’m a little sad about this lack of arachnid authors. I’ve come to see them as my scribbling familiars who arrive to usher in autumn, share their silk secrets with me, blessing the garden as they do, and then climb into the shadowy web of the next life. Now that it’s turned chilly I don’t hold hope that another Charlotte will take up residence for the remainder of the season and that makes for a dark October indeed.
The Writing Spider 