"Humphrey is the seven-legged spider who lives on the outside of my window. He lost his eighth leg in a ferocious battle with a black beetle.

After defeating the beetle (and eating it), I though Humphrey might die as he was very subdued and lethargic. He curled up into a leggy ball and did not move for several days. Then just when I had given up on him, he sprang back to life. He carefully checked his entire web, which is an ugly misshapen affair that bears no resemblance to the elegant webs in nature magazines. More than this, it has bits of lint and dust stuck to it. Humphrey seems unconcerned about that even though he is meticulous in his other housekeeping.

He also continues to build and add on new misshapen layers to the existing web structure. At the top of his web he has created layers of thickness-it is three dimensional, but in other places it is merely in a twodimensional plane. In other words his web looks top heavy and lopsided.

I had read somewhere that spiders create several different types of web materials, spinning them with their legs. Humphrey appears unimpeded by the loss of his hind leg in the web making process. When he is constructing a new web, he hangs from his single hind leg and wigglewaggles his other legs. Occasionally he slips and falls but these lapses neither deter him nor startle him. He merely clambers back to his previous position and returns to work.

Is there a correlation between his right-handed building tendencies and the loss of his right leg? Or is it some other instinct that drives him to build only in that direction? He can build-he is capable of manufacturing- the web in a left-handed direction, because Humphrey has major structural cables on the other side of his web, but those supports are solely utilitarian and bare bones. Besides he never hangs out on that side.

Humphrey hangs out in different poses--I have counted 12: upside down from his seven extended legs as if he were an upside-down parachute. He will loosely scrunch up with one or two legs fully stretched out-perhaps he is using his legs as stabilizers or braces or, as I do when I stick a leg out from under the blankets, to regulate his temperature.

My favorite position is when Humphrey lies on his back with his seven legs splayed out because it reminds me of a dog asking for his belly to be scratched. When he sleeps, he often curls his head into his abdomen and wraps his legs over his head and belly. Since he does not always dangle a leg in this pose and is frequently right side up, I imagine him resting in a homespun hammock.

He doesn't sleep in the middle of the web. Instead he positions himself at the top of the web. However, he does not always sleep in the same spot or in the same position. In fact like many animals, his routines very. He is a creature of habit only up to a point. Sometimes he is up early and very active. Sometimes he sleeps late. Are these changes to do with the temperature, daylight shifts, what he has had to eat? Are they just personal, individual preferences?

Humphrey does have preferences, which deeply shocked me. I have always thought of insects--bugs, arachnids, creepy crawlies--as little mindless robots that had simple automatic agendas and responses; nest, eat, reproduce, defend. Humphrey has behavior that reminds me of a cat.

After he takes a nap, Humphrey stretches. He flattens out all seven of his legs and stretches them luxuriously. He methodically cleans himself by "licking" and rubbing his legs and belly with the same startling agility as a cat. And when he chooses a spot to nap, he circles around, rearranges himself several times and then goes dormant. To pop awake, stretch, perhaps roll up in a new position and doze, he will arise and promenade his web.

The first time I saw him stretch, I wondered what he could be stretching--spiders don't have muscles. (Do they?) And are insects concerned about comfort?

Watching Humphrey, even though I have no particular interest in or affection for spiders, has changed the way I think about insects and their comrades. It raises a lot of questions about what we think we know and how labels and categorizations can distort the truth. There are so many assumptions we make about our world, the people around us, the creatures around us that may have little basis in factual data.

Humphrey, the seven-legged spider in my window, affords me a glimpse of the many questions I have never thought to ask. I wonder if anyone has the answers.

When I woke up this morning, Humphrey was gone; my window is very empty." (Elizabeth Haysom, Fluvanna Review, September 29, 2005)

Elizabeth Haysom is incarcerated at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy. Her essays, which now appear only monthly, are indexed at Glimpses from Inside.