Creepy, Quirky, Crawly

Last night I had dinner with a friend who confided to conversing with spiders.  Something happened to her during childhood that made her realize spiders have needs too.  Spiders are more than household menaces lurking in corners.  The way she sees it, Spiders have personalities and a certain sense of intelligence.  They can, after all, determine that we humans are something quite different from pieces of furniture.  

She sites one incident in particular:  she and her husband rented an apartment on a property with a lush, dense tropical garden.  The apartment and gardens were absolutely lovely, but once they moved in, they found the downside to living in the tropics:  spiders. The property was covered with spiders.  Most of them were harmless as most spiders are wont to be, but some of them were vicious.  Soon enough, she and her husband started finding themselves covered in big red itchy splotches.  Spider bites.

Still, she was not deterred.  Spiders have a right to life as much as any other creature.  She had especially grown attached to a spider who lived in the corner of thier bathroom and would silently admire her as she went about the business of primping up for the day.  He didn't try to frighten her with bold and sudden moves, and she didn't try to scare him with the old hairspray and match trick.  They respected one another's space and admired one another from afar.

Then, one morning, she nearly walked right into the spider's  newly made home in her bathroom. She didn't see it because it was perfectly placed in her line of sight.  Spider webs are not something you see or sense head on.  Not wanting to needlessly take the life of this clever one, she asked her husband to scoop it up and usher it outside.  (She would have done this herself, but she couldn't risk having the spider crawl off the scooping devise and creep up her arm.)  The next day,  same thing:  new web, same spider (she's quite certain of this), same spot in the bathroom.  So, the spider was politely ushered outside a second time.  The third morning, kid you not,  same spider, new web, same place in the bathroom.  

What's a girl to do?  My friend said all she could do at this show of intelligence was to reason with the spider.  She leaned in close to the web and said, "Spider, listen.  You can stay.  But if you so much as even THINK about biting my husband or me, you are down the toilet."

This morning, a therapist acqaintance of mine informed me that she'd been to this blog. She read that post...or rather, she tried to read that post.  She had to stop reading.  It was too much for her.  Do I really watch my neighbors at night?  It all was a bit odd, she tells me.  And she hears it all, so she should know.   

My apologies if my sudden drop from the web in the dark corner has frightened any of you.  I'll try to keep my quirks in check from here on out.