The shame camped on my conscience as soon as the deed was done. Some things seem like they are innocent fun until you step back a few feet and spy the potential harm. I went to sleep that night still heavy in the disturbed thought of it.

Spiders have never been on my top ten list of cool creatures to admire. Snakes, bats, even rats rank far higher than spiders. Macro photographs of their multi-eyed hairy faces creep me out.

Maybe it was from childhood memories of hearing Charlotte’s Web read out loud to me, but there is one spider that I admire; the writing spider. That’s the name I learned as a child. She comes with many different names: yellow garden spider, black and yellow garden spider, golden garden spider,  zigzag spider, zipper spider, hay spider, corn spider, or McKinley spider. That’s one of the reasons for taxonomic identification. Different people in different places call the creature different names, but scientists identify them by genus and species so that identification is universal. Her proper name is Argiope aurantia. A distinct characteristic of this yellow and black spider is the zig-zag pattern created at the center of her web.

I was in elementary school when we lived on Appleby Lane. We had a brick patio at the back of the house lined with flower beds. In one of these beds was the large web of our very own Charlotte. Summer afternoons were often spent finding ants, crickets, or moths to toss into the web and let the show begin. The spider would make a dash to the struggling insect and, using her lanky limbs, spin it round and round encasing it in web released from her abdomen. It was free and enchanting entertainment. Free to me. Costly to the non-arachnids.

In the front of our house we had a small creek that was lined with cattails. The cigar-shaped tops of cattails house an amazing amount of fluffy goose down-like seeds that eventually disperse in the wind when the cigar breaks down or is beaten over your brother’s back. For innocent fun I decided to break open a cattail and toss the floating white fluff into the spider’s web until is was full to sagging. That’s when my conscience was torn.

Upon wakening the next morning, I went to pay my respects to the spider and somehow eulogize and grovel over the demise I had caused. The web was completely clean. Not a fluff of seed was found in the web. It was all in a pile on the bricks below. The spider was seated dead center on her zag. Amazing.

That’s why I admire the writing spider, yellow garden spider, black and yellow garden spider, golden garden spider, zigzag spider, zipper spider, hay spider, corn spider, or McKinley spider.