Eight legs good - two legs bad. Okay so it does look like Fr. Patrick's favourite outfit - but it really is spider silk - not just any spider, the Golden Orb spider of Madagascar, with a body as big as a 50p piece and silk the colour of gold doubloons. It's the colour that is the most extraordinary thing - Rumpelstiltskin came to mind when I saw the skeins of thread, or the shiney petals of buttercups. One million spiders, four years, each thread made of 24 strands of silk. They've never been able to farm spiders because they eat each other if there are too many in one place - a metaphor for modern urban living if ever I heard one.
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