The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line.
The day is beautiful, yet again. I fear I’m getting spoiled. Yesterday Gracie and I took a ride just because we wanted to. She hung out the window, and I swiveled my head back and forth to see the sights. I saw gardens riotous with color, people mowing lawns, walkers and bicyclists. It seems the world is enjoying each glorious day.
The spiders are active. I saw a huge one I recognized as having once starred in his own scifi movie. He was weaving a giant catch a cat size web. It isn’t there anymore. Every morning there is a web in the same spot under my bureau and every morning I clear it. The spider must wait until I’m out of the room then he starts again. I noticed a web under the rocking chair this morning. It looked like a Miss Haversham web, one grown over time, but I know it wasn’t there Thursday when I polished the chair. It must be a really big spider to weave such a web.
I have never been afraid of spiders or snakes or any other creatures which cause other people to squeal in fright. When I was a kid, I loved watching bugs. At the swamp, dragonflies, darning needles to us, flitted and zig-zagged across the water. They were all sorts of colors, and I remember how their wings seemed to shine and reflect the sun. Snakes, especially garden snakes, were common. They’d be in the garden, and we’d give chase, not to hurt them but to watch them slither. I always thought that was pretty neat. Once, in Ghana, a boa was on school grounds, lethargic after having fed, and I ran to look. I wished it would move so I could watch, move in the opposite direction, of course.
The praying mantis is my favorite bug. The cockroach is my least favorite. In Ghana, cockroaches were as big as houses. Okay, maybe not that big but they were huge. We used to hunt them in the room in the back where the food was stored. We’d corner and shoot. Okay, we didn’t shoot. We broomed.
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May 29, 2010 at 11:02 am
On two occasions I had huge spiders build webs on the outside of my bedroom window. The webs took up the entire upper window. The spiders were about 2 inches in diameter. One was grey and black pinstripes and the other one was cafe-au-lait swirly patterned. It was fascinating to watch them do their thing. I named them Phillippa and Agata.
Agata came out at night when I turned on the room light. She hung on outside the window well into November. I gave very brief thought to climbing up there and trying to bring her inside but then decided she should be left to live her life. She slipped below the windowsill one night during a cold rainstorm and never reappeared. I suppose I could say that I missed having this giant arachnid outside my window every night.
May 30, 2010 at 10:16 am
Caryn,
This is sad though I understand why you let her live her life. I think her babies are probably still around. Think of it like Charlotte’s Web.
May 29, 2010 at 12:32 pm
At last we got some sun over here and temperatures rised quiet a lot. The only thing I´ve been afraid of is spiders. I had arachnafobia “en masse” so to speak. Nowdays they are my friends, unless they come out from the drains in the bathroom and are hairy. Especially if they don´t understand that they should change directions when I throw something towards them 🙂
I remember when I saw the movie Arachnafobia and suffered from it myself. Everytime a spider would attack I and three tenage girls screamed like crazy 🙂 🙂 When it all was over the persons beside me said: The movie was crap, but it was truly fun to look at You 🙂 🙂 🙂
Have a great day now!
May 30, 2010 at 10:18 am
Christer,
I’m laughing at you and the movie. I remember that movie well, all those desiccated people. The hero was also afraid of spiders.
I always figure spiders are keeping the rest of the bug population in check.
Glad to hear your weather’s better.
May 29, 2010 at 5:13 pm
This time of the year bring those nasty black snakes into garages and the dumb ones wrapped themselves around hubcaps to are swung to death when the car pulls out. They don’t have time to get out of harms way and Floridians are used to hearing the thump, thump as the snake is being smashed onto the concrete and tearing at their tough skin. At least once a year we have to pull the remains of one from either of our cars. I check daily to see if I can spot one in my spokes. So far, so good. I haven’t seen a cockroach in a long time. Our monthly pest service probably keeps them away.
May 30, 2010 at 10:19 am
Z&Me,
That is a bit gross-the thought of the thumping. They must be on the hubcaps to stay warm in the sun.
What kind of snakes are they?
May 29, 2010 at 10:59 pm
[…] The spider’s touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line. &laq… […]
May 30, 2010 at 10:20 am
This one borders on spam but then I read the page and was amused. As a kid, I always wondered if bugs crawled out of the vacuum hose.
May 30, 2010 at 9:00 am
Luckily where I grew up in the country snakes & spiders were very common. They never bothered me as I had a fascination of all creatures. Unlike America & Europe, in Australia the most common snakes are deadly so you have got to treat them with a lot of respect. Loved to go out & catch them, have a good look & then release them. Some big spiders here as well. The most common that gives most people a scare is the Huntsman. Loves coming inside to hunt down any insects they find.
Have had a beautiful Golden Orb spider in the ferns of late. Builds its web at dusk, sits in the middle & waits for passing traffic. Eventually, the passing traffic will be a bat & she will be dinner.
And like you Kat, I hate bloody cockroaches
May 30, 2010 at 10:25 am
Pete,
The garter snake is the most common around here, and it is perefctly harmless to people. It’s actually pretty. I looked up poisonous snakes and found every continental state except Maine as at least one species. I didn’t know that. Here in my state it is the copperhead rattlesnake. I memorized how it looks just in case.
Cockroaches will outlive us all.
May 30, 2010 at 10:56 am
Don’t worry Kat. Copperheads generally prefer to beat a gentlemanly retreat given half a chance.
May 30, 2010 at 3:35 pm
I have always thought they to be garden snakes. They are too small to be a diamond back. But they do get caught in the hub and once the car is engaged there is no getting out safely for them.
May 31, 2010 at 8:15 am
Z&Me,
I’m still thinking they wanted the reflective heat on the metal.
June 2, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Living in the city in a basement cockroaches are occasionally an unpleasant reality. Two episodes spring to mind — one night my cat Jeremiah, who sleeps on the pillow above my head, woke me up trilling. Half asleep, I patted him and said soothing things. And that’s when I realize he’s trilling because he had a cockroach in his mouth, which he’s now presented to me on my pillow. It took a bit to get back to sleep after that.
The second instance was in the wee hours of the night when I went to belatedly wash the dishes. Sitting there under a plate was the biggest cockroach I’d ever seen. I “eeped” and flung a plastic pint container over it, at which point, I kid you not, the bug proceeded to do push ups as if to show how macho he was! ::Shudder::
June 2, 2010 at 4:55 pm
sprite,
I’m with you on staying awake watching for cockroaches. That would have given me chills all over. It is like the tick I found in my hair. I was itchy for days.
I laughed about the macho cockroach, but it still gave me the creeps.
We used to hunt them in Africa. The kitchen supplies were kept in a windowless room in the backyard of my house. We go, turn on the light, and they’d all scurry. We’d give chase to the corner where the broom was our weapon of choice. It was a way to entertain ourselves!