Change can be gradual, or it can be sudden.

Either way, we humans are usually prepared for it. We’ve seen it coming. We’ve been warned.

Our technology and mass forms of communication keep us in touch with the progress of a changing planet.

We know when a pandemic is on our doorstep. We know when the weather is changing. We know if an asteroid is hurtling towards us. We know the likelihood of conflict in faraway places. We know when new laws are being introduced and how they will affect us (good or bad).

No matter what it is, someone is always on hand to tell us.

But who tells the animals we share the planet with? My guess, nobody. They work it out themselves.

And then they tell us. But who listens?

What of their world?

Let’s take a look at one part of their world, to them, their only world: my backyard.

This world is a green one: filled with trees, shrubs, bushes, flowers, birds, bees, bugs, lizards, frogs, butterflies, spiders and heaps of creepy-crawlies. It’s a nice world. They’re happy.

Though hot summers can be a frenzy of flying creatures: flies, beetles (including Christmas beetles), moths, mosquitos and other little creatures that sting or bite.

The Christmas beetles were the first to disappear. We haven’t seen them for about three years.

Then the flying bugs – whatever they were.

Two years ago, with the disappearance of those flying beasties, the spiders took action. Food become scarcer, so they built larger webs in order to catch whatever was flying about.

As the food grew scarcer, the webs grew bigger.

No two trees weren’t connected by a web. They stretched also across our paths – from gutter to tree. It was impossible to walk around the house and garden without walking into a web (followed by wild karate chops and strange dances from moi as I tried to shake off unseen spider).

But there was a message. The spiders were telling me they were hungry. They were also telling me that food was scarce.

This year the flying creatures are scarcer. Even the annoying flies are no longer annoying us.

But also this year the spider webs too disappeared.

What are the spiders telling us?

Their world – their environment – is changing. For the worse. So then, is ours.

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