This has been the summer of the spider. Or, rather, the spiderweb.

They’re everywhere.  The usual places, like corners, window sashes, eaves. But also slung across tree branches. Hanging like elaborate ladders, down the leaves of our bushes. Flat and tacked across the garage door and bay window. In between the slats of the deck stairs. Even tangled like gossamer nests in the grass.

As early as Memorial Day, I was flailing skinny strands of silk from my eyes and mouth and the hair on my arms. Soon now I’ve taken to walking around my house with a big stick, holding it menacingly ans swooshing side-to-side to clear the path.

The webs are like driftnets, which float loose in the seas and keep snagging things – fish big and small, but also turtles (some of them endangered) and even diving birds.

Yick.

Have you ever seen a spider make a web? It’s unbelievable. A decade ago, on a houseboat, we spent a night watching a spider make one: casting out his initial strand, like he was fly-fishing (literally, actually)  and then crochet concentric  octahedrals till he had this elegant, dastardly trapping machine.

I gained tremendous respect for spiders, after that. And would avoid blithely destroying their handiwork when walking down the deck stairs or through foliage.

But now, well, I’ve got a new image of spider webs. I see them as one day wrapping the whole planet in a big web/shell. Nobody can get out, and visitors from another planet can’t get in.

I digress, slightly.

Back to earth. My backyard, for instance. I mentioned at the outset that I haven’t see spiders – just spiderwebs. The arachnids may have scuttled from the coop, but here’s the thing: Their webs keep snaring food for them.

Every day I see a moth, a fly, a dragonfly, or some other airborne creature caught in their sticky snare, struggling to disentangle itself from the  pernicious threads. No spider is coming back to its net to even eat the things. They just struggle till they run out of life.

So here’s what I want to share with you. I’ve taken to walking around with a broom or a stick, and wherever I see an inactive web, or cobwebs, I wail on it till it’s fallen off and can’t hurt anything anymore.

Sure, they’re “just bugs.” But all creatures have a life, and a place in the web of life. So grab that broom and start swinging!