ABSTRACT
SPIDER’s account reminds ANT of an incident that took place during his winged mating flight, when he very nearly became caught in a spider’s trap. It was touch and go, but after a sticky experience he had eventually managed to break free. Was it the web, however, or the spider that had ensnared him? Wondering about this, ANT comes to the conclusion that ‘it was, of course, both the spider and the web, or what we might regard as a hybrid entity, the “spider-web”, formed by their conjunction’. But there is more, as ANT goes on to explain. ‘The web cannot function as a trap unless it is supported. In fact it was hung from lines attached to the twigs of bushes and to grass stems. So it was the way in which the spider, the web, the stems and the bushes all came together in the network, at that particular moment, that led to my nearly ending up as the spider’s dinner.’
