Encounter with a Writing Spider

This morning, we see an enormous brown and yellow spider on the walk to school.

I learn that this garden spider commonly holds the name "Writing Spider."

Argiope aurantia and Her Writing

She constructs and deconstructs this web daily. She builds a fresh web every new day with that distinctive zig-zag through the center of her web. Nobody knows for certain why she creates the series of X's in her web. Called stabilimenta, this silk structure inside a web confuses arachnologists. It seems to serve no purpose at all other than decoration. It doesn't necessarily stabilize or reflect light a certain way. It doesn't serve to attract prey or warn birds.

It's just writing in the web.  It makes it beautiful; it's artful.

The arachnologists want it to serve a great purpose and to aid survival. But it doesn't. I remember C.S. Lewis commenting on that which has no particular survival value. He writes in The Four Loves,

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.”

Perhaps even the spider writes just because it's beautiful. 

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I'm going to check on this spider tomorrow and see if I might photograph in better light!