Probable End of the Hornet's Hunting

Round and round and round spun the aged web builder as she worked her new corner trap. Unseen orbed spigots pitched silk to her practiced legs as she guided the lines from the sill to the wall. The memory of ten thousand strands visible in every movement. She had to know her new location would offer food, for like the light bulb, the window was heavily trafficked by the flying bugs of the garage.

Surely, she enjoyed the drizzle outside. Drops formed, became bottom heavy, and sagged down the pane. She fastened another strand of silk to the wall.

Her last home beneath the trailer hitch had attracted prey. But the web had been broken, and restored, and broken again and the constant mending might have prompted her move. The trailer hitch was dark and oppressive. Perhaps the openness of the garage wall had appeal.

She affixed fresh threads from her inner spools for reinforcement along the sill.

Web strength was essential since her slender body housed less venom than her younger days. She had the poison of one strike, and if she missed it would be the web that would hold the prey while she waited for regeneration. Gone were her days of multiple venomous strikes. She secured another line of web to the wall.

Probably her new web would soon be adorned with yellowing wings and severed appendages and other insectile remains. With the last strand in place, she swung to the web’s center to assume her usual hammock like position to wait.

****

The hornet emerged from its suspended communal nest. It’s paper walls crafted from saliva and plant fiber. Lined with the emptied bodies of insects. Hanging above a domain that spans the garden and the driveway and beyond. Days spent amidst trampled fruit and carrion. Flying to hunt helpless insect prey.

Methodically, the hornet moves through the raspberry patch in search of food. The rain is stifling. Not a good day for a young hornet’s impatient hunting.

He shoots upright, in an arc toward the garage where his prey has taken shelter. Legs outstretched, he alights on the wall.

The hornet is a bouncing black body in the high corners of the garage. Spider webs. Hunting for spiders is a familiar process. Fly into a web. Lie seemingly helpless. Tense as another would be. Lure confident spiders into stinging range. Kill. Always-careful not to reveal the trick too soon.

As a young hornet, he has only enough poison for one sting. If he misses, he will break away instantly to wait for his canisters to refill with lost venom. Flop. Lash. Sting. Consume, and carry the empty flossy remains back to the walls of the nest.

He crosses the ceiling. No new webs by the light bulb. The window. The hornet descends to sill level.

****

Strong delicate wings contorted on strong delicate web.

Recognizing the first easy insect meal in her new web, the spider approaches the near-trapped flyer. The hornet is larger than she had anticipated. A struggle will seriously damage her new construction. Grateful for precautionary lines of silk.

The window proved to be ideal. For both hunters.

Stinging range. The hornet thrusts hard toward the unshaken spinster but stabs only air. His venom wasted, he twists to the side to break the web, but few strands snap. There is a sticky newness that holds his crumpled wing. It was the rain that drew him to the garage sill. On a sunny day he could have stayed with overripe berries on the garden path.

Desperate wings strain but don’t propel. The hornet writhes, but the web only breaks to hold him fast. Again he thrusts his abdomen skyward. Again he misses. Nothing is released.

The hornet’s violence damages her work. It will need serious repair. First kill this oversized meal before it escapes. The spider eases to the hornet’s side. She drops a spinneret to his flank and draws several strands to the sill.

Now kill.

As her jaws lower to the hornet’s thorax, he breaks from his momentary pause and twists hard to the side. Her poison spews onto his wing.

She scrambles to lay silk, her fragile legs quickly mending torn web at every turn.

Two formidable predators. Both drained. Both wait.

Empty old spider atop helpless young hornet. Entwined in broken and secure web with poised legs and folded wings amidst excreted venom.

Neither move.