THE SPIDER OR THE BEE

I watched a spider capture a honey bee today – it was quite a feat – the bee was already caught in the web, but its abdomen was searching for something to kill – the spider had to be agile – isolating and immobilizing the top of the bee while avoiding the twisting, angry abdomen – even after she’d wrapped the bee eight tenths of the way that pointy end was still down there going pop-pop-pop – trying to exact vengeance even in death – the spider went up to the top and laid into the head and the pops of the stinger-extensions became slower but more resolute – stretching – extending – twisting more than one might imagine possible over and over again ever more slowly and yet ever more extremely until the extensions of the stinger finally ceased – even then the spider waited quite a while before she finished wrapping the bee – while I was watching, a car accident I happened across the other day appeared in my mind – I remembered the fact that a lady we went to college with just died from an infection in her pancreas and the question emerged in my mind: are we all the spider carefully working around the deadly peril in order to sustain ourselves or are we all the bee, already caught in the web but unsure about what’s going to happen next?