(Science Week, day 5!)

This distant relative, this particular spider. To this point I've found more than I'd hoped in my current home, and perhaps interestingly, none of them were about making webs. But this one was happily just outside, and making its web was just the beginning.

I imagine you've noticed that spiders have this remarkable tendency to suspend their webs by three strings attached to nearby objects – for example, a railing, a tree branch, and a rock on the ground – effectively forming a giant "Y" with the web in the centre.

I've seen so many of these "Y" arrangements on walkss that I associate them with the stillness and silence of the moments I discover them, perhaps because of the mystery implied by the finished structure. Sometimes the horizontal span between the "left" and "right" attachment points is enormous, like the breadth of a spacious bedroom. How do they do it? Do they attach at one side point, somehow draw the string in a miraculous leap over to the other side, then walk the taut band to descend and affix the "down" point before returning to the new three-way intersection to begin spinning outward?

However it's done, this spider had done it. But the web was looking a little old and damaged, and I supposed it would soon be either repairing it or starting a fresh web.

It turned out that it wasn't quite either. When I returned, I found the spider (presumably the same one, though I can't be certain) had indeed built a new web nearby, but had it suspended by connecting it using one string not to a rail or branch, but to the original web! Its own "side" and "down" strings were symmetrical to those of the original web, so that the entire structure was not a "Y," but an "H," with the two webs at the intersection points!

Once again, the original mystery. How did it get the string between webs A and B? By similarly somehow "leaping" from the old web all the way to the fixed post beyond the site of the eventual second web?

I don't wonder; I assume the answer to this particular mystery of the natural world is something experts have long known. Maybe I'll even see it happen live someday. I've taken care not to look it up before typing this, not because I want to stew forever in the mystery as some declare they do, but to allow myself a good while to ponder it, as a reminder that we have constant opportunities, even if we aren't expert naturalists or scientists, to carry the mindset of those who are.

After discovering the amazing "H," I didn't take such close note of what happened next. But I think my correspondent spider had, eventually, returned the "H" to a "Y" centred around the second web. Perhaps it was like owning a mansion – cool to try, but ultimately a little much. To extend the thinking: if this spider could manage an "H," you'd think a spider would maximize its chances of catching food by conjoining several webs in a row. But there must be a considerable downside, or spiders would probably have popularized it.