Spiders

Okay, so if you're spider-phobic, this might not be the post for you. Skip down and read the one about horses again.

There. That's enough space for those spider phobes to not have to read this post.... really... spider fearers, skip this one...... If you're open minded and want to learn... go on. Read. :)

But I was just browsing another blog and she was discussing her attempts to live with spiders rather than just smooshing them on sight. It's something I try to do, too. I used to be absolutely terrified of all spiders--I was a spidey-smoosher from the instant they crawled into view. You get near Kim in those days, you gets smooshed if you have eight legs and a web. :) But somewhere along the way, I read a book about how it's important to have predators in our yards-- the way they keep the population of the the animals they predate down is really important. (Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, it was... great book). To be honest, even before that book I was trying to tolerate spideys, partly because my mother-in-law is a "bug fan" and she sort of helped me become more understanding that most spideys weren't out to suck me dry. (Some of them are... and you can see it in their beady little eyes--they have multiples you know. Some even as many as six!.)

The website I linked above has a note about how black widow spiders will rarely leave their webs. And to not put your hand in her web cause that's what will make her attack. It actually gives me a little bit of the heebie jeebies to think about it. I was sitting on my couch in my "good living room," which is mostly white, one day when I saw a startlingly black spider cruising around on the window sill. She was very shiny shiny and had the telltale red hourglass on her butt. As soon as I noticed that red shape my adrenaline went through the roof-- heart pounding, I ran for some sort of bug poison, cause damned if I was going to get near enough to smoosh THIS spider!! But she couldn't be left to roam unhindered in the living room either! I found some wasp spray-- it was the kind that foams and traps wasps inside the foam. So I squirted her with this stuff. She struggled for quite some time-- I guess spiders have a pretty high tolerance for foamy poison. She eventually asphyxiated, and stayed trapped in the sticky foam. I made Andrew clean it up later. I may be a feminist, but it is the boys' job to clean up dead spiders. It's generally the boys' job to do anything related to bugs. (Bees are different-- I take care of the bees as I am a bee charmer...) I think that the black widow who visited me was probably living in the attic or something and fell through a vent. Cause according to everything I've read, black widows do not generally traipse around your living room throwing tea parties with scones and the good silver. (But perhaps she was looking to do just that! Saucy little minx! No way! I don't share my silver tea set with deadly spideys!) *

And then there is the story that the Daddy Long Legs spider, which we always just dismiss as not dangerous, is actually more poisonous than the Black Widow... that story says that Daddy Long Legs don't have teeth that can bite humans, but if it could, it would eat us. I saw this story on TV, and you know, of course, that everything on TV is true. I always think of how Daddy Long Legs' get tortured by small boys pulling their legs off and imagine that the spider is furious, gnashing teeth, thinking "If only I could bite this little bastard....." Apparently, there are two kinds of spiders that get classed as DLL... one of them is not venomous at all, and the one that IS venomous apparently has never bitten a mammal, and so the sites I read say something like "that's inconclusive and testing of the theory would be... tuning out... science boring me......blah blah yadda yadda." So I say that the fact that it's never bitten anyone doesn't prove it's not poisonous. I'm sure it would if it could.

There are spiders that will still kind of creep me out and I have to control my inner-squasher. I fed my mother-in-law's tarantulas when she was out of town and it sort of got me all shivery down the spine (still does, actually, even in the retelling). But one cool thing about spiders is that they have, throughout history, been icons for the Fates. So I try to think of it as maybe this spider-girl is checking me out for her boss, Arachne, and I need to be good so that she will put in a good word for me with Fate, and I'll get some good swings my way. Spin away-- get me some good stuff, wouldya? I'd really like to request some fated inspiration on my academic writing, by the way, if you could. I promise to not smoosh anyone who isn't going to kill me..... I figure, that's a pretty good policy, for spiders and people as well.

*My mother-in-law generally dresses as a "black widow" for Halloween. It's quite a cute costume. I will, of course, let her use the tea set if she wants to, and try not to spray her with wasp foam.