Like A Vast Impossible Shadow

Curious, I took a pencil from my pocket, and touched a strand of the spiderweb. Immediately there was a response. The web, plucked by its menacing occupant, began to vibrate until it was a blur.
Anything that had brushed claw or wing against that amazing snare would be thoroughly entrapped. As the vibrations slowed, I could see the owner fingering her guidelines for signs of struggle. A pencil point was an intrusion into this universe for which no precedent existed. Spider was circumscribed by spider ideas; its universe was spider universe. All outside was irrational, extraneous, at best raw material for spider. As I proceeded on my way along the gully, like a vast impossible shadow, I realized that in the world of spider I did not exist.
--Loren Eisley