Silking in the Sky

I’m waiting at the coach station for a National Express. It never turned up.

What did turn up was this.
A garden spider going about its business.

Busily. Beautifully.
Silking in the sky.

Words & Vid: Ian Nisbet

Hetty The Hanger On

I’m Hetty the Hanger On
Strung up here
Willing dinner to come
Held from suspended state
In interminable wait
I’m Hetty the Hanger On

As you can see (or can’t see) I’m quite tiny
Sat anywhere but here
You wouldn’t find me
I’m Hetty the Hanger On
Ultra neat and impeccably tidy
Whiling my hours away rather slyly

Hung from the end of my tether
I can hold this pause
For as long, well, as long as whenever
Coz I’m Hetty the Hanger On
My forbearance stretches
Out for forever

I stay silent, imperturbably still
My movement is perfectly nil
I’m Hetty the Hanger On
My will to restrain
From this doors window pain
Is an agonized slow motioned thrill

I revel in monotonous glum
I love to play dead and act dumb
I never feel tedious bored
For with web tightly spun
My trapdoor is sprung
I’m Hetty the Hanger On

I exist to entangle entwine
My patience effortless, sublime
Applying iotas of pressure
For unpleasant pleasure
I’m Hetty the Hanger On

A killjoy suppressor
From minute morsels I dine
I’m Hetty the Hanger On
I negate endeavour
I negative time
My motive malign
For crawly creep crime

With endurance exemplary
I intense intentionally
An alarming arachnid
Pulling strings as expected
Mites must succumb my way eventually
All my window pain worth it
For I’m Hetty the Hanger On

And I’m having such
Ad infinitums of fun!

Poem & Pictures: Ian Nisbet

Big Barry Dies

Big Barry was scampering around a couple of weeks ago. Lashing his spidery long legs about like whips.

But on Friday he died.

Died slowly and conspiciously, in the middle of the kitchen.

Was he trying to free himself from a cannibal spiders web? (hence why he lost a couple of legs)

Or was he ravaged. By a ferocious female. While on the job. And with duty done had now to do the decent thing – go crawl away and die?.

But his dying was agonising, hopelessly pathetic.

Almost tragic.

Vid: Ian Nisbet; Filming: Hazel Brown

A Spider Quartet

For the last month a quartet of spiders have webbed up the windows of my bedroom, living room, bathroom, and kitchen.

They don’t take too kindly to me poking into their corners with my torch.

Words & Vid: Ian Nisbet

Big Barry & The Cannibals

This Big Barry Spider lives in Hazes kitchen at the moment.

Possibly under the sink. Possibly behind the washing machine.

Unless The Cannibals have wrapped him up for dinner already. Like they did a couple of weeks ago with another black spider. Nearly as big as Barry.

Big Barry don’t come out much.

It’s not because he’s frightening.

It’s because he’s frightened.

Words & Vid: Ian Nisbet
Fearless Filming: Hazel Brown

Some Shaldon Zoo Pictures

A few pics from our visit to Shaldon Zoo yesterday

Here is the Meerkat Lookout dutifully doing his job

His fixed focus was on something about 2 feet above our heads

Next is this White Faced Saki Monkey

‘Their faces look almost like people’ Haze said.

Next is this Azara’s Agouti.

Shy animals are Agouti’s. Get preyed on a lot.

Next was this Red Bellied Lemur.

Conservation Status: Vulnerable

Also a shy seeming animal. Timid. Vulnerable looking with those big baby brown eyes.

And finally here is a Bird Eating Spider

It was huge. I wanted to see it move. But it was fast asleep.

I’d go back to Shaldon Zoo just to sit next to this Hairy Bird Eating Beast.

Waiting to see it scuttle scurrying across its cage hissing, with fangs in the ‘bite-your-head-off’ position.

Her Ladders of Death

This common spider
weaves her web of tensile steel
Dewdrop ladders..thin threads
Outwit the wasp, the fly..
Outwitting all who stumble by.

Long silvered cables stretch
Across the unwary eye.
Stuck..sticky stretches of
A wished for prize…
Wrapped ..stung..sucked dry.

Satisfied..smug in her dull brown coat
Full bellied, pompous ..prim,
She attends her ladders of death
As September sunbeams warm her prey!

Drawing & Poem: Hazel Brown

Saturday September Spider Hunt

Lets go on a Saturday September Spider Hunt!

Start in the back garden. Continue up in Tessier Gardens.

Thems everywhere.

Yes we are!

We Spiders got serious work to do. No time to lose! Now shove off!

Dream catchers

While Haze was up and out in her back garden taking pictures of these

I was still wrapped up in the silky web of sleep. Overslept the alarm! So Haze wrote this with me in mind

This Fog has no voice
It crept in at dawn.
To drip..drop..mist upon your eyes,
Shrouding you with wet wool
When sleep would not release you
From your pillow of dreams.
Outside the wet webs of waiting spiders
Hang with silvered globes,
Unaware of their own beauty.
A tension sits heavy on the still air
Pauses…then trembles ..waiting..
For the warm breath of the Sun!

Poem: Hazel Brown

I eventually re-emerged from down there, and flapped off to work

But I felt dream-woven into the bottom of that silky web all day.

Photos: Hazel Brown

Spiders are coming!

This is what Haze was seeing in her back garden early this morning

These wet webs were everywhere. A couple of dozen spiders had got cracking with the dawn.

Haze has written out some spiderlore to bless the sticky webs with.

Photo & Calligraphy: Hazel Brown