There is an enclosed stairwell that leads into my home parking garage. It serves several purposes. 1) it keeps out, hopefully, the unwanted losers wanting to break into your car 2) it slows me down as I try to get to my car 3) it is home to too many creepy spiders and their unfortunate victims.
Littered along the sides where the ground meets the wall lie the carcasses of many a dead fly, beetle and other unfortunate insects that mistakenly take the covered darkness as a safe haven. There are lots of those slow moving, oval shaped grayish bugs that don't really serve a purpose other than to live and die a gruesome death by an evil spider.
Anyhoo, this morning I opened the door leading to the stairwell, careful to not touch the door frame so as not to disrupt any spider that may be precariously hanging around, and navigated the 9 steps down to the next door. And that's when I saw it. The creepy spider about 1 1/2" in length, one fo those brown hairy ones that I grew up being terrified of, yet oddly fascinated by, huddled in the corner of the wall, a little too close to the door handle. Oh, he thought he was clever, trying to blend into the cement wall, all quiet and still. But I saw him. I knew he was there just as sure as he knew I was there. I should really carry Raid with me for such an occasion, and I could have killed the sucker in one blast. But spiders, even big creepy ones serve a purpose, right? Unlike slugs. What purpose do they serve? Well, they keep the manufacturers of Slug Bait and Sluggy Be-Gone in business. There's no such thing as Sluggy Be-gone, I just made it up. I think it would make a good children's book title. Forget about the actual story, the title has to be great. The Adventures of Sluggy, Sluggy Come Home, Sluggy and the Philosophers Stone.
Spiders are interesting beings. Have you ever sort of caught sight of one racing along the floor or wall but once you see it, it knows you've seen it, and it just stops. Funny thing is when I see a spider, it stops me in my tracks too - fear sets in. Maybe that's the same for the spider- fear. It's like it knows you saw it but thinks, well maybe if I stop moving, she wont' see me anymore. But I do, spider, and so much better because you're still and so much easier to kill! It's like they have a 6th sense, or maybe I have some telepathic connection with spiders. Probably because as a baby I was left in the basement because I cried too much. That's another story for another day. : (
I HATE SPIDERS, but like I said I'm oddly fascinated by them. As a child I would capture them in jars and watch what they do. In all honesty, I don't think they survived the torture, or maybe they just didn't get enough air. There was a particular one that dwelled in our bathroom window. It was one of the old school windows that had rope pulleys so the window could slide up and down, but the rope was long gone. This spider lived in the now vacant hole at the top side of the window. I would see it daily. Hanging around, waiting for it's next victim... until it became my victim (insert evil laugh here). How to catch it? It wasn't easy;took several attempts. Even slightly touching the cob web sent the spider scurrying for his cave. Aha moment! Make it impossilbe for it to get back to his cave... genius. Patience. Just like a spider. I caught him in a jar. If I remember correctly, he was an unusual find, black with yellow stripes,thus my fascination and it was so much more interesting than the typical hairy brown creepy ones usually inhabiting the house. I would make attempts at feeding it, but I don't think dead flies cut it. One day the jar and new spider were gone. I think one of my sisters, thinking the poor thing was dead, tossed the jar and it out.
Another childhood memory was finding a web with a spider egg that just hatched! All these baby, orange coloured spiders spilling out of the egg. EWWW , but COOL! Writing about this does give me the shivers, remembering how they looked... all of a sudden I feel like there are creepy crawlies all over my body! yikes!
My days of being fascinated with spiders has ended, sort of. I do admit, if I see a spider creating its orb web, I will stop for a moment and watch it weave its magic.
These days I try to catch and release. My sister bought me a spider catcher. The picture above shows it. It's a contraption that, well captures spiders alive so you can let it go outside so it can live and scare another day. I thought she was crazy buying this for me, but I'm so glad I have one! I guess it's my way of making up for all those poor spiders I seperated from their buddies and loved ones. Karma. I don't want to come back as a spider that becomes the unwilling victim of a child with too much wonderment.
As I read over what I've written above, I realize, dear reader, how mental I sound.
PS - The spider I saw this morning was left to live... for now.
