Dance of the Silver Threads

It was just another day at work, and everything was just as it was the day prior. For the past few days my shifts have thankfully been quite short. A nice and breezy 4 hours each. At the start of this bout of work I found it going by awfully fast, but as the days came and went my focus would wane and those 4 hours seemed to elongate beyond my comprehension. The main reason as to this was due to where I was placed. For each of these shifts, due to the short nature of them, the managerial team placed me behind the till for the entirety of each, allowing those who had been working for longer to get on with other things. Now I would have no issue with this normally, but my patience was straining ever so slightly due to how I had five days of this cycle, the longest amount of consecutive shifts I’ve been on since starting here 2 months ago.

All of these days were pretty much the same, except for Day 4. It was a Sunday evening, and my shift was the 7-11. After the mad rush of 8pm came and went there was a lull in customers, and I found my attention wandering to just above the screen of the till, right to a small, orange spider. Now, I don’t like spiders very much, and my first thought when seeing it was to be on high alert for it coming too close to me, yet it never did. It walked up some string which was hanging from the till to the safety screen and, to my astonishment, began to weave a web.

I had some questions, first and foremost being “Why build your home there of all places?” It would be so close to me, a massive human, and the almost constant rattling of the till couldn’t be pleasant. The little guy clearly had no qualms with either, stubbornly having its heart set on being stationed above my till.

As mentioned before, I dislike spiders. Though it depends on the size, my reaction will always be on not wanting it within my proximity, yet here I was about 30cm from one not minding too much. I think it was the setting I was in which determined my actions for the rest of the shift, which was to just let it be. And let it be I did.

Half an hour came and went, the shop was devoid of customers once more, and again I found my attention returning to the spider. Its construction had moved on considerably, the main framework of the web was almost complete and I watched as it ran up and down the near invisible threads to add in more support. Thanks to the lack of people in the shop I let myself be consumed in fascination as I watched the small spider go from strand to strand, adding more and more to its work of art.

Before this moment I have never actually seen a spider build its web. It's the sort of thing where they just kind of appear around the house and you just get rid of them without a second thought. To actually see it happen before your eyes is on a whole other level. After finishing the supporting strands the spider moved onto doing the rings of the web, starting from the middle and working its way outward. I watched in pure fascination as the little guy worked its way around circle by circle with such precision and patience. It took its time with each strand, ensuring the perfection of its placement each time.

Much like a dance, each movement appeared to me as choreographed, the spider gliding across its web of silver adding ring after ring. Something else I noticed during this time was how the web acted in the light. Depending on my positioning, the web was either completely invisible, making the spider look as though it was dancing mid air amongst the slight draught of the store; or, if hit just right by the lights, reflected them back, giving it the appearance of a subtle silver tone. In the latter way, I could see the full beauty of the web, and could revel in all its little intricacies which would probably go unnoticed to a lot of others.

Without realising it, around 45 minutes had gone by since watching the spider, and within this time, its web had been completed. Right at that moment I was called away to take my break and, for the first time, I was genuinely worried for the spider’s safety. With me gone someone else took to the till for 15 minutes, and I was scared that they would see the spider and kill it, destroying its hard work in a matter of moments. When I returned, I saw that the spider was thankfully still there, huddled in the middle of its masterpiece and most likely waiting for a meal to come along.

That night I left knowing that it would have a peaceful night, and to my surprise the next day, on another 7-11 shift, the spider remained. I was actually relieved to see the spider make it to another day. Its web no longer looked as pristine as it did the day before, now covered in a light layer of dust and tiny hairs, but the spider was safe.

I don’t have work until Friday now, and as I’m here writing about this spider, I find it unlikely to ever see it again. This experience by no means makes me a fan of spiders, but it gives me more respect for them, and it makes me want others to know how much work they put into their homes despite their sizes. The memory of the little orange spider will probably stick with me for a long while, and its dance of the silver threads will make me more appreciative towards the beauty of nature as a whole.