Meet Zelda.

I first noticed this astonishing translucent green spider with her dramatic red and white markings a month or two ago. (Go ahead – click the photo. Freak yourself out.) Check out the head-to-head mortal combat. The bee didn’t stand a chance.

Fascinated with this gorgeous creature who stared boldly back at me, I went online and typed in “green red spider,” and there she was – or rather, there were her many cousins. Turns out Zelda is a green lynx spider. Identified by their charming surprised eyes, exotic markings and spiny legs, lynx spiders jump great distances onto their prey, and some claim their bite is toxic to humans. Beautiful and dangerous…but so much more appealing than the black widow, that spinner of nightmares. Scientists have studied the possibility of deploying green lynx spiders as agricultural agents of “green” farming (pun reluctantly acknowledged), because of their penchant for devouring harmful pests. It’s too bad about the bees, though.

Zelda’s rose hangs at the end of a long thorny stem that flops over the neighbor’s fence. Like an anxious aunt, I started to worry that some over-zealous and under-observant gardener might dead-head the rose, not noticing its gaudy occupant – or worse, noticing, and dispatching her anyway.

One day I saw a smaller green spider hanging out cautiously nearby, no doubt drawn to the regal Zelda, yet perhaps dimly aware of his peril. The next day the hapless suitor was gone. As the weeks progressed Zelda grew fat and glossy. She was eating well – I figured she must be eating for two. Two hundred, that is. Sure enough, last week I noticed that Zelda was looking downright skinny, even a little peaked. And she was hovering protectively over a large, round, spiky, dusty grey object. Nice work, Zelda! I was reminded of Charlotte’s Web and the reverence we all learned to feel for Charlotte’s beloved eggs – how protective Wilbur was until all those tiny baby spiders with their tiny soprano voices drifted safely away on their silken filaments.

I am Zelda’s Wilbur. Twice a day, walking my dog, I peer at Zelda’s withered rose, first relieved to see it’s still there, then admiring (not without a certain creepy shiver) the strange unlovely egg sac she guards so jealously. I hope no oblivious gardener interferes. I hope I’m there to see those dozens and hundreds of tiny Zeldas work their way out of their cocoon, to spread their weird beauty far and wide. In a world poisoned by pesticides, heavy metals and artificial hormones, where extinction threatens everything from honeybees to polar bears – a planet so polluted that we routinely sicken along with our air and water and soil – each fragile creature’s survival is a tiny victory.