It was a damp, drizzly, dewy dawn with just a touch of fog that greeted me this morning as I took my steaming cup of Panama’s finest out on the front porch to de-crumpyfy myself. As the caffeine started to kick in what I saw spread out all over the fields to the east and south was an arachnopobic’s nightmare. Hundreds of spider webs glistened as the sun started to break through the gloom. I’m not arachnophobic though I admit I don’t care for the critters much and after a few minutes I was compelled to get out the camera.
Each of those white spots in picture is a spider’s web.
Of course the morning wouldn’t be complete without a couple of photo clichés of dew drops on the webs…
One More Good Adventure 
I’ve never seen so many webs in a field – apparently there’s something good to catch in there, and plenty of it!
I’m no fan of spiders, although I do have a kind of live and let live policy for the ones I know. I had a very unfortunate encounter with what could have been a brown recluse, and nearly landed in the hospital with drip antibiotics. But mostly I live with cute little black and white spiders that jump about 6′ at a time, and have eyes that seem to rotate in different directions and have a tendency to run as fast as they can when they see me coming. All good.
The ones I just get creeped out by are the huge garden spiders – the orb spinners that put their webs at about face level in the woods. They’re huge, and if they’re in the web waiting for breakfast you can see them and avoid the web. If they aren’t there? Spider webs in the face. Aaarrrgh.
Strange thing about all those webs…it was only that morning. The next day started the same way; light fog and drizzle. And not a web in sight. I think the birds around here had a banquet.
One spider phenomenon I got to witness was what is called “ballooning.” It’s where spiders spin out a long stream of silk that catches the wind and whisks them off to another location. I saw this happen several times out in the marshes of south Louisiana when I was running small crew boats to inland drilling rigs. Sometimes there would be thousands of those strands wafting through the skies. Makes you stand in awe of nature.