Last year there was mainly leaf curling spiders, not just here in the garden but also up on Summerfield in the Hunter Valley. This year the leaf curling spiders are gone and the orb weavers are back.
They spin huge webs. They sit at the centre, mainly at night. During the day they often hide out of the way but not always. I often forget to look for them and blunder through them and have to then unstick myself from the clinging web.
One day I come across one its web right across the path, feasting on a beetle.
Meanwhile in the house there are crickets. I’m not sure why they come into the house. Sometimes I come across them, in a cupboard or on a skirting board. Over the last few weeks there have been two. At night when the lights are out they begin to chirp. One is in the dining room the other in the laundry. Then one moves to the front corridor. I don’t know what they eat. I wonder if they ever get to meet. If never, it is a very forlorn love affair.
Then there was silence.
Weeks later I found the motionless exoskeleton of one of them on my files on the desk upstairs.