The outside of our house has been a spider haven this summer, with evidence of their presence in every corner and crevice. Wispy nets, carefully constructed, look like strewn white cotton candy, but I rarely see the spiders themselves. They hide behind our storm shutters and wait ominously for the slightest movement in their webs, only popping out when their groceries are delivered. It’s when you don’t see the spiders that you know they’re there.
Many years ago, when my dad and mom lived in Texas, a saucer-size tarantula came out of a bag of groceries, having gone undetected in a bunch of bananas. As the story goes, my mom was busy putting the groceries away when the tarantula stealthily began to creep across the floor towards my brother. Gary, who was just a toddler, sat in the corner of the kitchen and looked at the eight syncopated legs approaching him with great wonder and reached out to grab the hairy spider plaything moving towards him.
This might be a good time to advance my theory that most women in general do not like bugs, with a particular dislike for spiders; coincidentally, many of my men friends find spiders quite fascinating. They’ll talk about watching the grisly eight-part documentary, “Spiders: Living in a World Wide Web,” then note that their wives will enter the room, and stand aghast at what is being shown with telescoping accuracy: a helpless moth being devoured, and the institutional voice of a narrator using words like, “predatory, venomous, mechanical, and cunning.” Family oriented are the last words we men hear before the click of the remote.
Following this theory, when my mom spotted the tarantula walking like a wind-up Tonka toy towards Gary, she reacted quite differently than a man might. She immediately screamed for my dad who raced in to behold a huge spider looking at Gary with a great deal of interest. While dad held the tarantula down with a broom, mom was struck with a sudden and unexpected empathy for the predator, and not being able to bear seeing the spider squished, instead boiled water to pour over it, favoring a slow agonizing, torturous burning death to the one-swat-be-done-with-it variety.
I have seen tarantulas behind the glass in miniature terrariums at the zoo. A mouse has been placed in their enclosure and scurries back and forth in front of them, trying to make friends. Simple conversation starters from the mouse are returned with an icy stare. As the spider shrinks itself back into a dark corner, preparing to pounce, they brood about their dismal reputations and past family history.
Years ago, Grandpa Spider move to Florida and never visited his grandchildren again. Dad Spider was a bully and was avoided by everyone. Mom Spider tried to comfort the neglected kids by spinning more webs, but tiny movements reverberated through the dysfunctional home creating a tangle of unhealthy imbalances. Family spider data from a 1978 University of Panama double blind survey indicates that over 73% of tarantula spider kids wander off, become bulbous, and isolate themselves in crates of bananas ready to be shipped to America. Spider kids have a tough way to go.
My son-in-law has a profound fear of spiders. When he discovered a spider creeping on a windowsill in his new home, he announced to his family that they may have to move immediately. I told him there might be other, less drastic options available. I don’t know what he is going to do as more and more houses in his neighborhood prepare for the fall season by throwing huge silk spider webs across their bushes and porches. Halloween for my son-in-law seems to carry a sinister, menacing weight, but I count my blessings that a broom is hanging nearby, and the water I’m boiling is for a cup of ginger tea.