Spidertember

It is September again, and the spiders are in full bloom. We see them and their webs everywhere.

I will not say that I am not afraid of spiders. Just the other day I picked up a plastic cup in the sink and a spider came galloping around the corner headed for my fingers. I yelped and gave my hand a short sharp shake, and the cup flew clear across the kitchen. The spider flew only halfway across the kitchen, and could be forgiven for thinking this encounter ruined its day.

Many a spider has confronted me in the bathtub, and in my early years I tried to wash the offending arachnid down the drain. If I succeeded, I spent the entire shower watching the drain and fearing that the spider would re-emerge, a wet and angry spider. Sometimes, oh my sweet Lord in heaven, it did.

Somewhere along the line I learned the glass and paper method of spider and insect removal. For those of you who don’t know, this involves taking a glass (or jar) and trapping the spider or insect inside by placing the glass over it. Then, gently, you slide a piece of paper between the glass and the surface you hold it against, allowing the creature to step up on the paper as you seal off the opening. Holding paper securely to the glass, you walk outside, and let the spider walk out, or, in the case of flying and stinging insects, remove the paper and run, because, man, some of those wasps can get madder than a hornet.

I hate it most when spiders sneak up on me. One fine sunny day forty years ago I got into my ‘58 Chevy to drive somewhere. I reached to pull down the sun visor, and a small brown spider plummeted down and hung there, bobbing on its slender thread between the steering wheel and me. The horror of that moment is with me still, and I shudder at the memory. It was the surprise of the spider falling so suddenly in front of my face that sent me whooping and writhing, trying to back right through the driver’s seat.

When I was about ten years old I was walking a trail through the brush in our goat pasture one day. I walked along, lost in some kid reverie, when, SPROING! I ran into something that stopped me in my tracks and bounced me backwards. My eyes focused on what it was: a spider web across the path, with a spider at the center of the web. That spider looked to me to be about the size of the ‘58 Chevy I would later own, and I shrieked, turned tail, and ran as fast as I could out of there.

That happened to me one more time, in adulthood, here on the island. I was living in a place that did not have an indoor bathroom and one morning I was sleepily making my way up the trail to the facilities when once again, SPROING! This time I stood back and looked at the web and rather than terror I felt amazement that a spider web could actually stop the forward motion of my adult body. Strong, those webs.

Soon the weather will cool and the spiders will be much less evident. For now we shall consider it no surprise to walk out the door in the morning and into a web. They’re everywhere.