Spiders are amazing climbers, but this feat — more than 500 feet in the air — seemed incredible.
I was near the top of the LeVeque Tower on a narrow balcony that circles the 46th floor. No. 46 is considered the top floor of the 555-foot building, even though you can get a little higher by climbing a ladder or two and squeezing through a few hatches.
Way up there — extending from wing to beak of one of the building’s eight terra-cotta eagle statues, which peer over the city — was a spider web.
It must have been 6 feet across and was in excellent shape — an indication of an “active” web.
“Look, a spider’s web!” I shouted to the others with me, sounding like an excited kid.
But, come on: A spider web at 500 feet? How is that even possible?
All sorts of questions raced through my mind.
Could a bird have dropped the spider?
Even if the spider somehow managed to get on the elevator, how could he (or she) have pushed the button?
Do flies and mosquitoes soar this high?
Could it have been left behind by Spider-Man during a visit to our city?
I looked but couldn’t find the spider that had spun the amazing web.
He (or she) must be shy.
Mark Ogden, the project manager for Turner Construction who is overseeing a renovation of the LeVeque Tower, offered a theory for how the spider achieved such heights:
“I think it’s a generational thing.”
What he meant is this: The web-building spider’s family, generation after generation, worked its way up a few floors at a time until it reached the pinnacle of spider achievement and the 46th floor.
If true, the web producer’s grandfather — times about 50 — might have started the ascent soon after the building was completed in 1927.
I can’t imagine, after all those years of climbing by the family, the reaction of the spider that finally made it to the top.
Steve Wartenberg is a Dispatch reporter.