I'd rather be a spider than a fly

We have a spider in our backyard that spins its web across a path between two bushes every night. The web it weaves is a piece of engineering excellence; intricately designed, it glistens in the moonlight and attracts any unsuspecting insects that happen to be passing that way. In the day time the spider packs up its finely woven trap so that it can sleep peacefully, or enjoy the fruits of the previous night’s bug trapping expedition.

I am amazed at the way this spider does not simply string a couple of webs across from one bush to another, but each night creates a massive booby trap that could win awards from the architects’ association, the mathematics’ institute and the artists’ guild simultaneously, so beautiful and so precise is the structure. Then every morning it packs it all up ready to start the process again in the evening.

Spiders don’t tend to get very good press in most homes where they usually suffer at the hands of those who either feel the need to remove their webs in the interests of cleanliness, or who unceremoniously dispatch them with a squirt of Mortein or a thump of Adidas. However, I’ve become quite fond of the little fellow (sorry, he’s not so little now) in our backyard and I look forward to seeing his nightly constructions.

It seems that each day we have a choice of how we are going to go about our work. We can follow the example of the spider and take our work seriously; attempting to do the very best we can and producing high quality results even in the knowledge that few people other than ourselves will appreciate the quality and intricacy of our work.

Or we can take short cuts, set ourselves lower standards and achieve less.

I think I would rather be a spider than a fly.