Somewhere on Pulau Ubin on a knoll overlooking the suburban build-up of Punggol, this garden spider sat on an exposed leaf with a slightly inrolled edge. Barely a centimetre wide, she was an immovable object, relying like many of her kin on a passing resemblance to a pale droplet from fowl ends to ward off unsavoury interests. A closer look reveals a hazy mosaic of ovoid polygons on a wedge of dirty white. No orb was evident, but tiny pieces of silk littered her vicinity like the sheddings of amorous encounters, which I suspect ended with a clutch of eggs within the shadow of the blade. In the dim grey of the late morning, she cast an inscrutable gaze from an octet of gleaming eyes, her field of sight as short as those who would barter the irreplaceable bounty of the earth for a flimsy basket of costly indices.
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