A Fable

I once watched a spider building its web. It was not long ago, in a place I love to go to, where water and sky meet. The spider was working between two branches overhanging the water. I watched for a long time as it spun, round and round, creating a beautiful trap in order to feed itself. After finishing the web the spider hurried away to a hidden part of the web and began to wait. After a bit I noticed a dark low cloud out over the water swiftly moving toward me. At first I thought it was a flock of birds until I realized the mass was much closer than birds could have been as the mass was close yet still seemed to be made of small animals. As they reached me, I realized it was a small swam of flying insects, dragonflies of all things. As I realized they could not hurt me, the web I had been watching caught my attention as the first dragonfly flew into it. The spider quickly dropped from its hiding place and bit the struggling dragonfly. Soon the dragonfly was still and the spider was wrapping it up to be eaten later. Suddenly there were two more dragonflies caught in the web. The spider moved to bite one of them and as the spider was wrapping the dragonfly and moving onto the third dragonfly, five more dragonflies hit the web and stuck. The dragonflies all struggled to release themselves and the web began to give way under the wriggling, straining bodies. As three more dragonflies hit the web, it broke away from the branch and fell, dragonflies and spider into the water. I watched as the spider, no doubt surprised by going from feast to sure death in the matter of moments, beat its legs against the water to try to swim in a vain attempt at saving itself. As he spider began to stop moving I swatted at a dragonfly that had attempted to land on my cheek and began to move back away from the water.