With sadness, I farewell Madeira, the spider which set up her home among the maderia vine leaves growing through the clothes line in our backyard, late last year. She taught me a lot about spider behaviour. I see far fewer spiders these days. It is another class of invertebrates that appear to me to be in far lesser numbers than years past, although this is a subjective observation of mine. What’s going on in addition to pesticide usage? I read Rachel Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ in the late ‘60’s, while still a boy, and she foretold what we have an ominous taste of these days.