Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, September 4, 1995                   TAG: 9509060103
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PREYING ON THE MIND

The morning was hazy, the way most of our mornings have been lately, and the sun was just coming up: nearly behind the hawk, from my vantage point. So what I saw was a silhouette, and then a tail banded on the underside as the slim bird flew away.

The television antenna is mounted on the south end of the woodshed, not because we keep our T.V. in there, but because the roof of the woodshed is so much lower and flatter than the roof of the house.

So, there sat the hawk, at least for a few minutes, to the south.

While at the same time, suspended from the woodshed's northern eaves were, to the east, a growing hornets' nest and, to the west, the huge, spectacular and intricate web of a black and yellow spider.

The hawk, of course, is somewhere else now. The hornets and the spider, however, still hang on.

This hornets' nest is ordinary. Not much bigger than the one blown down by storms in the spring. Presumably, the hornets that reside therein are ordinary, too.

But this is the biggest spider I've ever seen. Bigger, even, that any huge wolf spider that's ever skittered around in the bathtub. Its body is fatter and longer than the first joint-end of my thumb, and several of its egg cases are as big as shooter marbles. Maybe bigger.

The morning I saw the hawk, a grasshopper was all wrapped up in this spider's web. The next morning - no grasshopper left at all. Not even a few extra strands of silk still dangling to commemorate its demise.

Now, think of this:

Cooper's hawks and sharp-shins feed mostly on small animals and other birds. Spiders feed on small animals and other insects. According to my field guide, the young of vespoid wasps (and this includes hornets) ``are fed by the adults with chewed-up insects of various sorts.'' I suppose that could include other chewed-up vespoid wasps.

Right here in my yard, predators abound. Cannibalistic predators, that go on about their business all the time, whether or not I'm watching.

In the woods behind the house, something is sawing away at one of the dead pine trees. The ground at the foot of this tree is littered with sawdust. Piles of fine, curly sawdust. I can hear something humming inside this tree, boring away at its innards, but so far I've not been able to spot the culprit.

Culprit? Now, there's a loaded word. As loaded as ``predator.'' As loaded as ``cannibalistic.'' Such anthropomorphic views!

But I wonder if it's possible for me - or for you - to have any other kind of view. Would not a hornet, if a hornet could write, describe the world in vespoidpomorphic terms? Would not a hawk speak as if all had been created specifically for the accipiters? Would not an orb-weaver see in its webs proof of spiders' centrality in the universe? After all, our planet is as stunningly round as one of its fine egg cases.

I am not convinced of the end of evolution. I am not convinced that dominion is ours. When I walk in the woods, I'm careful not to be caught in a web. When I walk in the yard, I keep a chary eye on the sky.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times columnist.