The vocalisations of a bugfox, transcribed to digital text
Here you will find some written pieces by me, the bugfox custodian of this Digital Forest, ranging from musings about special interests, short narratives, stream-of-consciousness fun and many intermediates between the aforementioned!
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Mother
CW: Animal death and injury references.
We are inherently cursed beings from the start
We came from a battle-torn mother, from a species forged by the parade of monstrous gods that came before us
Upon an ever-shifting carved clay effigy our ancestral pilgrims came and conquered
A gaping wound. A symbol of false serenity so thoroughly draped in the ornamentation of fallen imperialist leaders
We emerge from the nurturing sac and leave behind everything we were implored to believe was the truth
Our mother sits upon the throne forged from the deaths of the many that came before her. From her hollow frosted eyes of chitin, what lies beyond…?
She begins to collapse as what could have been, what is and what will be encrust her cephalothorax
Our mother has reached the end, and thus our brood of noble eaters will see her off and assure her that an ending is allowed to be tragic, however inevitable. A universal symbol that can’t be stained by the garish place we called home
My siblings and I wish her farewell with our venom and enzymes
Perhaps the response of the chelicerae piercing her frail, soft cephalothorax was her response
But, what did our tired old mother really say…?
Commentary
The above poem (or poem-adjacent piece) was based on the process of matriphagy, in which the offspring consume their mother at an early stage in their life cycle. It is a process observed in a number of arthropods, with it being integral to the life cycle of a number of social spider species, including Stegodyphus dumicola, the subject of this written piece. I find the process of matriphagy to be extremely fascinating, and invariably tinged with a poignant sense of tragic beauty.