Vampiric creeper

Observer: Estella Yee
Date: 10-14
Location: Capital grounds, west of Gold Dude standing on top of a tower structure
Time: 1327-1349
Weather: 57˚F, overcast

Spiders creep me out to no ends. Maybe it’s due to their multitude of eyes, their engorged torso, the pincers I imagine at their mouths, or maybe it’s because of my brother’s trickeries with a toy tarantula when I was a child. Nevertheless, I usually get shivers just by looking at one, but this time, I felt frozen underneath a warm windbreaker. Among a copse of manzanita trees, I found clusters of small, ½-inch urn flowers with a slight pink blush over primarily white blossoms. Curiously, there were 1-inch round berries hanging. They seemed almost hairy but the green balls were firm to the touch and rough, similar to a litchi peel. A few of the fruits were progressing from green to yellow to rose in color. The leaves were dark green and radially arranged. The trunk and bark was smooth and either auburn or mahogany colored, with some of the newer growths a light pink. Three or four honeybees were visiting the upside-down vases of nectar when one seemed caught in something. It fluttered its dark wings powerfully but could barely move a few centimeters at a time, slowly progressing across an invisible tightrope. Finally, it arrived at its destination and crawled about the flowers. I thought that was odd, until I witnessed a queer grey looking insect. A glint of sunlight illuminated a 12-inch diameter web that I had nearly walked into. A spider web, and sure enough, a spider laid faithfully next to its prey. It was brown with small white dots of white along its underside. The slender toothpicks of legs were decorated with horizontal stripes in black, brown, and white. Slowly, the dead honeybee was engulfed in a layer of white webbing, becoming a cocoon of death. The spider calmly brushed its eight pricks over its food as I experimentally blew a hard breath onto the leaves to watch its reaction. I turned away before it started digesting its meal. It unnerved me to imagine the vampire drinking the bee’s life away.