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With the recent opening of the third Spiderman movie, this is particularly apt.

I was walking my boys yesterday in an area of open ground I discovered a while back (ground that has since been subject to some landscaping so inevitably I'll be moved on yet again after it's 'prettied up for the public and I no longer am permitted to let my boys run free).

After we visited the three Llamas penned in an enclosure, which were full of curiousity for the two strange black and white animals that barked and were otherwise fascinated with them, we started back to the ute.

On the way I walked straight into a strand of spiders silk (and here we get to the point of the post). I, (we all, no doubt) have walked through spiders webs before and usually, if not always, one can hardly feel the gossamer touch of the finely spun silk. Just a trace and it's gone.

But not this thread. No, this one, I suspect was spun by Spiderman himself, so tough it was. Allow me to explain:

As I've said, typically, a weightless strand of silk will just break, with just the slightest touch to indicate it had even been there, but in the case of this 'supersilk' as it were, it actually strained before snapping with an audible 'tick'.

I walked into the thread and immediately felt it caress my forehead from top right, running down to bottom left, breaking contact with my forehead just above the left eyebrow. I kept walking.

On the second step, I felt the strand stretch as it bit deeper into my head, still stubbornly refusing to break.

And on the third I heard it snap with the aforementioned 'tick'.

Let's put this in perspective:

This is spider's silk spun by a creature weighing a fraction of an ounce. I'm a 190lb man in motion. This thread protested my motion, and put up a fight before eventually giving in. Remarkable. Got me to thinking a. what sort of spider spun such strong silk? And b. what was different about this particular type that provided such strength?

Some scientist somewhere must be able to manipulate this...anomaly, and exploit it to the benefit of man. (Cause that's what we do, isn't it?