Despite an occasional pathetic squeamishness, I protect insects and comfortably co-habit with spiders, and like the idea of this great old tree being thickly woven with them.  I also like the beadle-like pigeons strutting about, as if preoccupied with the maintenance of forest protocol. 

Drifting in the midge- and spider-thick world of a great silent tree, its skin of leaves a globe above me, while the pigeons walked about like beadles on the wood floor.

Source: Adam Nicolson, Sissinghurst: An unfinished history (London: Harper Press, 2009), p. 168