Signature Spider , Ph. D (Tricks)

My FB friend , Nandan Tavanandi, posted this wonderful click of a Signature Spider up to all kinds of tricks in the web. 

These Spiders, weave webs, not only with silk, but also with smart thinking.  X pattern white  zigzag weaves to highlight their residences to keep folks alerted.  Then a cunning consolidation of the many legs into four, to align with the X, the intertwined leg hairs, glinting in the sun, making the spiders appear like a flower in the centre of an almost invisible silk web.   The smartness doesn't end there.

Read on.  And stop wondering where , we , as evolved bipeds, got all our mean ideas from.   



 (photograph by Nandan Tavanandi)

Smartness in relative.

Some,
painstakingly weaving
a gossamer delicate home,
make it more secure
by knitting in zig zag strips,
in an X-pattern.
a fake No Entry sign.

As if
having a cerebral cortex
in every limb,
many legs
pretending to be four,
thoughtfully aligned
with the zigzag,
and
she sits
at the centre of it all,
reflecting the sunlight,
to appear as a flower,
fooling
the lumbering bees and wasps
that rush to visit.

Empowered,
she watches the male
weave his smaller web alongside,
and offer it to her
to wrap the eggs.
Thank you, monsieur,
his utility over,
and she proceeds
to eat him up.

The spider eggs
with an undeniable
mercenary DNA,
hatch,
and the little ones
simply eat each other,
till they energize
to break out of the wrap.

Does it surprise you
at all
that we
the smart bipeds,
have evolved
into a
cunning,
revengeful,
violent
merciless
and sometimes,
mentally 
blind, deaf, and dumb  people?