An Untangled Web

The single silvery thread seemingly streams upwards from a green pool, each slow whirl glinting in the slanting rays until ending mid-air, a loose end to an incredible feat.

How could a tiny spider unspool such a lengthy line from her spinnerets? The total mass of the proteinaceous thread is seemingly as large as the spinner herself. Some weaving spiders have to eat some of what they've just made for the energy to produce the next strand. Is that her trick?

What is her design with a line cast from an overhanging tree down to a remote swimming hole? An orb or sheet web would have to span an unlikely fifty-foot space. A funnel, tube, or tangle web would be a similarly impossible task. Some spiders have been known to jettison themselves to a new location, but a wide pond in a fast moving stream seems an unlikely destination.

What is she planning to snare? The creek is teeming with flies of progressive sizes - may-, deer-, horse-, damsel-, and dragon-. Such a single thread would snare exactly none of them, and who's to say that spiders are only functional builders? Each October adventurers travel from all over the world to nearby Fayetteville, West Virginia to leap off  the longest single arch bridge in North America. If people do it, why not arachnids?

There's my most likely explanation for the free floating web strand above my favorite swimming hole. I've discovered the base-jumping spider, and I hope she can get one of her weaving compatriots to build her a safety net.

Why do I say she's a she? Only female spiders drop a pheramone-laden drag line to reel in mates, unlike some people we know and love.