I’d swept out some cobwebs, and being on rather unfriendly terms with spiders, had put the long-handled duster outside to shake it off (okay–picture it more like, I ran with it and dumped it fast after I’d cleaned some of the outside webs and slammed the door), and I’d left it out there; maybe the buggies would scurry away from it for me. Well, turns out, one did, a good-sized one.
I’ve been googling, trying to find the right combination of words to conjure up a picture and a name for the very small brown bird with the surprisingly long, sharp needle of a beak that this one had. No such luck. The fuzziness of this shot doesn’t convey it well at all. It did not have the short wide beak of, say, a chickadee, although the bird was about that small. It saw that spider and whisked in to our back porch to snatch it up.
The spider was having none of it, and did the spidery thing of running into the dark, underneath a wooden box we have up on top of a few 2x4s. And the bird followed it! Spearing away at it and dragging it back to the light. One leg crunched, and the spider scuttled off with the other seven. Nuh, uh, dude, and the bird was right under there after it again and dragged it back out. Totally harpooned the thing, and then ate one potato chip leg at a time, savoring dessert first, and then the main course of the body of the thing.
I watched, fascinated; the beak was about as wide as the spider’s legs to begin with, how was it going to get that big thorax down? But it did. Then it looked at me like, Got seconds? No? And flew around the patio, looking for more.
I needed motivation to clean off that duster and sweep the rest of the cobwebs. I think I just got it.