Autumn Hazards

Day 363: My readers, I ask your forgiveness. I cannot give you the Latin taxonomy for this beast, nor can I provide its common name. If I see it at a distance, I refer to it as "one of those big triangular garden spiders." If I become aware of it somewhat after the fact when it has spread its web across the width of my front door, its appellation is too profane to print in this history. I am to some small degree arachnophobic as the result of spending my early childhood in black-widow country with a mother who was terrified of even the tiniest spider, and I have worked very hard to overcome the Pavlovian responses which she inadvertently instilled in me. I can now pick a Daddy-longlegs up by one of its appendages and deliver it safely to the outdoors when I find it sharing my house, but those little sideways-walking crab spiders give me lingering heebie-jeebies even after I have mashed them flat and disposed of the remains.

In the wild, I react less violently when I take a web full in the face, perhaps because I feel I am an intruder into their territory. My home, however, is my sanctuary, and it should be spider-free. When Big Triangular Garden Spider laces my exit shut, I demount him with a stick (assuming he is detected first, of course) and remove him to some location where, I hope, it will be assured that we do not meet again. Some don't take the hint immediately, and have to be unhomed several times. But worst of all are the nests of hatchlings: thousands of tiny gold offspring strung like dewdrops in the spider-silk, nearly invisible to the eye. They are guaranteed to send me racing for the shower, clawing at my hair, my clothes, brushing myself off with the frenzy of a woman gone mad. In that circumstance, I cannot control arachnophobia. It claims me, and possesses me in the bonds of its web.