Can Spiders Think outside the Box?

. . . Very silly rhetorical question, that.  Spider sentience and human cognition could only be cognates in a first class Vonnegutian chronosynclastic infundibulum.  Yet this funnel spider's web suspended upside down in space makes thoughts of thinking, and of boxes to be outside of, just too easy.

Here, gratis one Vinay Nihalani (sinlessphotography.blogspot.com/2007/12/funnel-spider.html), is the lovely portrait of a normal funnel spider posing in the mouth of her normal funnel web: 

The tunnel plunges deep into the dark, where the spider can lurk in wait for her prey.  

Ergo, how not to wonder, knee-jerkily, what the author of the aerial web in my garden this morning was thinking? Is it better to ask what cosmic imperative it followed through the night?  

Other possibilities:

The spider

• is the offspring of a funnel spider and an orb-web-spinning spider and suffers some fatal genetics-based confusion;

•  suffers from anomie;

• is mordantly witty;

• knows something the rest of us don't.
  

Promeris Catastrophe

Anyone who has a dog hates this expression of bewildered misery on its face.  Well, the wee Wolsey certainly wore it for several hours the other evening.  I didn't look in the mirror, but I expect that I had it, too.  It all started, I suppose, when the young vet who took over our beloved old vet's practice switched from prescribing Front Line to prescribing Promeris for his flea- and tick-prone clientele. 

In a rare instance of foresight, I had gotten both Wolsey and Olive their 6-month supplies a month before we ran out of their Front Line. And last night, as Wolsey and I sat on the couch watching a movie, I squirted a dose of Promeris onto his neck. Soon, a terrible chemical smell began to bloom in the air. It was reminiscent of a blend of industrial oil and acetone, and it kept getting worse and worse until my eyes were watering and my nose was dripping. Meanwhile, Wolsey adopted the look illustrated above. The episode was rather panic-inducing, to tell the truth. I grabbed a towel, wetted it, poured on a bit of Tide, and scrubbed Wolsey's neck down as if our lives depended on it. Then the poor fellow jumped to the floor and vomited. I didn't barf, but for about 48 hours I felt quite nauseated and had no appetite at all. 

The day after the fateful application, I googled and learned that others have suffered the same phenomena after an application of Promeris.  Just as interesting was the discovery that the majority of users did not. What's with that?  Does Promeris fall in the same category as soapy-tasting cilantro and asparagus pee? Is it anathema only to a subgroup of dogs and people?

I really need to know more about this. And as soon as my temper moderates a bit, I'm taking the $200-plus Promeris supply back to the vet, asking a lot of penetrating questions, and getting my money back!