"Come into my parlour" said the spider to the fly

"Will you walk into my parlour?" said the Spider to the Fly, "
'Tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy;
The way into my parlour is up a winding stair,
And I have many curious things to show you when you are there."
"Oh no, no," said the Fly, "to ask me is in vain;
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again."

From "The Spider and the Fly" by Mary Howitt

Yesterday I noticed that a spider had taken up residence between the leaves of a potted plant on the window sill of my kitchen, and built himself a five-star spider web with all the comforts of home.
Anyway, there was this annoying fly thingie flying around getting on my nerves so I batted it and it flew directly into the spider's web. And even before it had hit the web the spider was right there waiting for it (almost as if it had a spider-sense, hehehe).
I stood and watched as the spider very busily wrapped the fly in silk. I could see the poor little fly waving it's legs helplessly and desperately, and I could almost hear it yelling "Heeeellllllpppp mmeeeeee! Heeeeellllppppp mmeeeeee!" like in the movie "The Fly" (The original one, with Vincent Price, not the Cronenberg remake from the '80s).
Then the spider carted the bundle off to the centre of the web and sat down and ate the poor fly.
It was very interesting to see but I felt a bit ghoulish. And I felt a bit bad for the poor fly. It's not exactly the same as watching a lion catch and eat a gazelle on the Discovery channel, after all it was actually my fault that he got eaten. It was the poor little fly's legs waving around that got to me. I guess I identified more with the fly than with the spider, what does that say about me? Anyway, spiders are sort of creepy, the way they hang around waiting to catch some poor unsuspecting insect (and if you don't believe me, check this out)...
And I thought of the fly's descendants that would now probably never get born, and how maybe one of them might have been destined to do something important that will now never happen. Or maybe the fly's descendants would have eventually evolved into a totally new species. With one swipe of my hand I might have changed the course of history.

And anyway,I thought that spiders were supposed to bite their prey and paralyse them before wrapping them up and eating them like that.


The spider declined to comment.

"Move along now, folks. Nothing more to see here."