Empty Nest

So she’s all by herself now, the tiny momma spider who tended her egg sac for weeks in the notch above our front door until her multitude of offspring emerged from it this past weekend. Alone again, naturally. It’s kind of sad because now that she’s done her duty she might herself be done. I don’t know why that chokes me up, a bit. But it does.

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The thumbnail on the left was snapped this morning with not a baby in her immediate vicinity. The thumbnail on the right shows the nearest one who’s begun its journey through life by first moving a few feet away to the the other side of the door frame. The pencil eraser included in that image is not there to rub out the spiderling, but to give a better idea of how truly tiny these little eight-leggers are — especially when considering the previous and scale-less macro pix I snapped of them (here and here).