Ensnared

Today I was hanging laundry outside and I spotted an orb weaver as stocky as my fingers in a nearby rhododendron! I'm not your stereotypical arachnophobe, but spiders do discomfit me. I was fascinated that an orb weaver, what I think of as being a fairly small type of spider, had managed to grow so large over a short summer (north-east United States). I wonder how many times it had shed.

Even more rivetingly, when I was taking laundry back down, I spotted a yellowjacket wasp fly into the orb web, become ensnared, and immediately be webbed into a bundle by the enterprising spider! I didn't know they ate wasps. I thought they might be afraid of stings. But, this one, after letting its venom liquefy the wasp's insides, enjoyed some yellowjacket soup.

There hadn't been any shortage of wasps around that bush this summer, so I wonder if that was the spider's main source of food to result in such growth.

I'm definitely feeling my doubled meds today. Not in a good way. I feel like my eyeballs are way back in my skull, peeping out of these knotted tunnels. My guts are tremulous, my mouth dry and cottony.

I just want to sleep. Really sleep, not the mere dozing and stupor I must make do with. No dreams, no awakening.


Tuesday the 1st of October, 2019

Pain: 35
Struggle: 25
Success: 45