About a Spider

"You mean you eat flies?" gasped Wilbur
"Certainly. Flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midgets, daddy-long-legs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets - anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web. I have to live, don't I?"
"Why, yes, of course," said Wilbur. "Do they taste good"
"Delicious. Of course, I don't really eat them. I drink them - drink their blood. I love blood."

As everyone already knows, I have quite a fear of spiders (see Super Spider Caper). I think they are eight legged, creepy, crawly biting beasts with nothing on their minds but attacking me. Falling on my head in the basement, making the stairwell from my basement out to my backyard practically impassible. However, what many people don't know is I also respect the spider and I am quite fascinated by them... mostly when they are outside and not bothering me. This brings me to my story.

One night, about a month or so ago, I was letting Dukelbear outside for his before bed potty break. I looked over to my right and I turned pale as a ghost, developed goosebumps all over my body, squealed and quickly ran in to the house, making sure to securely close the storm door behind me. There, sitting in the middle a magnificent web that was easily twice the size of my head, was a spider that was about as big as a silver dollar. This was my natural reaction to a spider. Here is where my insane logic about spiders kicks in. This spider is rather large. It is in a web that spans from my back awning to the planters on the rail of my "deck" (for lack of a better term. It's more like a stoop made of wood with planters built into the rail.). Therefore this spider clearly had the advantage if it came down to a battle. I am so skiddish when it comes to spiders that it is hard for me to even try to kill them with shoes, brooms or anything of the sort. It always turns into a disaster with the spider somehow almost ending up on my person. Not that I would have tried to kill this spider. I have a rule when it comes to spiders. If they are outside, eating mosquitos and various other pesky bugs, they may live. If they are crawling around in my house, they must die lest they attack me in my sleep. This rule stands true. So this spider, living in the back of my house, outside, putting her web up at dusk and taking it down at dawn, was permitted to live. In fact, I sort of started to enjoy watching her catch wrap bugs up in her web. Biting them and getting them ready for a tasty meal later. It is almost a childlike curiosity to me. I can't stand them, but I love to watch them work. Suddenly I found myself almost looking forward to seeing this giant, scary, spider at night and first thing in the morning when I let Duke out. I even named her. I called her Charlotte. I decided that she was a she because of her size. Female spiders tend to be larger (know your enemy). I know that Charlotte seems rather cliche for a name but I looked at it this way, Charlotte had to have been the only spider in my whole life that I actually liked. I enjoyed reading Charlotte's Web as a youngster. I was sad when Charlotte died in that book.
One night, a little over a week ago, I came home from, well, God only knows. I went to the back door to let Mr. McDukerson out and I looked to my right... and saw nothing but a mangled web. It looked like something very large flew through Charlotte's web. I felt disappointed. I was taken aback by the fact that I was actually a little bit sad about the disappearance of this spider. I thought about it for a minute and figured she was probably just hiding up on the awning, waiting to rebuild her web. Days went by. There was still no sign of Charlotte. I started talking about it with my roommate (who thinks I am insane for even developing such an odd bond to something that scares the bejesus out of me) and then my boyfriend (he made fun of me for calling her Charlotte). I finally came to terms with the fact that I will never again come home from the bar and drunkenly wave at the giant spider sitting in her web. There will never again be a time when I say, "Hi Charlotte" or tell her how much she sucks at being a giant spider (I never saw any big bugs in her web, and trust me, she was a big spider).

This evening, after the thunderstorm, I called for Duke to let him out because it had finished raining (he won't go out in the rain) and I was getting ready for bed. I opened the back door, and who do I see hanging from the awning in a wet spider ball (moving, not dead and shriveled)? Charlotte!! There also seemed to be a male suitor lurking around. Either that or my back porch becomes spider central when it rains. Oh this is good news (not the spider central part)! I could not believe my eyes. Charlotte lives after all! I told my roommate first thing when I let Duke back inside. Once again he looked at me as if I had a purchased a one way ticket on the crazy train. Perhaps I have. Me, actually liking a spider... preposterous, ridiculous, ludicrous!
Perhaps I am crazy...
Maybe she will rebuild her web tomorrow. If she does I'll post some pictures to go along with this blog post.
Dear lord, with all of this spider talk, I'll never get any sleep tonight.