Today I watched one of nature’s miracles. It happened as I was hanging out the washing. I suddenly noticed a black spider drop down and hang from one of the spurs just an inch or so from the central pole of my rotary washing line. He hung there for some minutes, sometimes still, sometimes swinging to and fro, and at other times he whirled in an anticlockwise motion like a dervish spinning around and around until I thought something must be wrong with him, so I fetched a blade of grass and touched his legs, but he took no notice. I later came to regret my well intentioned interference when I understood what I was witnessing.
Hi odd behavior continued and I observed what appeared to be a scab forming on his back, and it was this that gave me my first clue. As I watched, large soft-looking new palps appeared, and I looked at the shriveled remnants of his old ones. I wondered at all this new growth contained within the old skin. I imagined how uncomfortable he must have been.
He still continued, as before, intermittently swaying and whirling. As he turned I noticed his legs were now positioned arch-like and a thin shiny wet line appeared along his thorax. His legs remained in this position, and by now my old legs were aching from standing so still for so long. The sun was hot on my back and arms, but I was unable to remove my cardigan because of a skin condition I have that makes me light sensitive. Faced with a choice between my comfort and my fascination, I have to say the latter won.
Now there was a definite change: what looked like threads were appearing where the thorax looked shiny at the sides. Still he hung and whirled around with his legs in an arch shape. Slowly but slowly, his new legs appeared from beneath the old. Being a spider, he was not metamorphosing as I have watched dragonfly larvae do at the pond many times, he was simply shedding his skin, albeit painfully slowly.
His legs were almost free now and he kept flexing his old skin, trying to break free from it. It was strange to see the old legs flexing when I knew they were all but empty. He now managed to break his legs free, but to my amazement, made no effort to leave. Instead he curled up, legs drawn into his body as much as possible and hung swaying in the sunshine and breeze. Indeed his length of silken thread allowed him quite long sway, and as I leaned in for a closer look the breeze blew him across and he hit me in the face! But no harm done.
Still transfixed, I stood there for long minutes, just watching. I think he was just tired and resting to regain his strength, and perhaps allowing his new body to dry out. I wished I had a video camera so I could film and re-watch the whole process at my leisure.
At last, he started stretching out his legs and whirling again. I realized perhaps it was his spinneret was not free yet. And so it was, he reached his back legs down his abdomen and worked on that part of himself. In a trice it was over – he was totally free of his old skin and me watching. He climbed above his old skin and hung in the sunshine, and crawled away.
I carefully collected his old skin to add to my personal natural history museum. The entire process had taken more than half an hour.
