Upstream: Selected Essays

While renting a house, Oliver notices a small, common spider that has built a nest beneath the stairwell. In her chaotic and unorganized web are six small egg sacs. Oliver watches as each sac breaks open, spilling out thousands of tiny, translucent baby arachnids. These spiders explode into the house, carefully venturing further and further from their original homes until they eventually disappear. Often, the spider sleeps near her most recently produced sac, keeping one leg on it at all times.

At five in the morning, a cricket lands in the web. Oliver observes the spider carefully wrapping the cricket, leaving it motionless in her web. After a while, she returns and begins kicking the cricket. Each time, the cricket jolts and writhes. When she has tired out the cricket, the spider bites one of its legs, and Oliver assumes that she is releasing a venom to paralyze the insect. Just as she did with her own eggs, she sleeps at night with one leg touching the mummified cricket. When Oliver awakes the next morning, the cricket is gone. Like her other prey, the spider had released it when she was finished, tossing it to the floor.

As Oliver observes and considers everything she has seen, she has many questions and is often struck by the realization that she does not know the answer.