Is This You? Spiders Don’t Pay Rent

The miracles happening outside are amazing and terrifying. I can go along with the baby deer and little cute cottontail rabbits as they hop their little cotton butts across the roads I travel. But. Yes, a soft fluffy cotton covered “but.” I am not all that enthralled when I come across a new hatch of cat spiders. Let me tell you what happens when a momma cat spider’s egg pouch hatches.

First sign is that you get a hand or your face covered with web that has been strategically placed to both protect the new herd of spiders and catch food for the little spiders, or as I call them, spidies. When you hear the tearing of the web, it is too late. You have been caught. Will you be calm and just pull the web away? Nope! You do three hours of cardio in maybe ten seconds trying to escape. It is not until you have backed away that you see the entirety of the web you have become part of. Oh, and it is massive to say the least. It has a center that is really fascinating and perfectly executed into the regular spiderweb shape. Then it is expanded into and onto anything within spider web throwing distance. 

That is where I found myself just a few short but memorable days ago. Now first I have to say that I have two rules about spiders. These rules I have self-initiated. Because I made them up. One is that if I encounter a spider outside in its natural habitat, I pretty much leave it to go forth and capture and eat as many flies as it can. Two. Outside is a spider’s living and work place.

Oh but just let one of those little devilish multi-legged so they can run faster than I can throw a shoe, yes, the multi-eyed buggers that can see me coming with said shoe from across the room. Just let one come into my house and it is curtains for it. See, the way I see it, if you don’t pay rent or put something towards the mortgage or up keep around here, it’s out you go. Spiders, feet first. All sixteen of them!

There is a gray area in this rule. It has to do with windows and doors. And that is what happened two days ago. I was getting ready for window washing when I opened my dining room window and noticed them. Hundreds if not thousands of teeny, no bigger than the head of a straight pen, baby spiders flowing and swinging on various lengths of web. Well, that just would not do. Even though most were on the outside of the screen, there were more than an amount I would guess was 300 of the little spits of bright orange on my side of the screen. After I gathered myself, un-wrapped myself from the now strung out and sticky web that was torn by opening the window, I began the glorious task of ridding my air space of the %^&* things!

First with a wet paper towel I grabbed from the kitchen. Seeing that there were more than hundreds, yes, HUNDREDS, next came out the vacuum and the giant suck up began. Now do not write to me about leaving them be. The mother spider, the sneaky thing, had set her egg sack within my air space and these hundreds of soon to be growing to full spider size, were not welcomed here and they were not paying rent! 

When I felt I had irradicated my side of the screen from the little neighbors I noticed I didn’t even make a dent in their numbers. That’s when I brough out the big guns. The “kills on contact” bug spray I keep at the ready in my house. It is a gallon with a spray nozzle that is tethered to the jug by a plastic tube. At any given moment’s notice I can grab and go. HEE. HEE. HEE. Said the spider to the fly. But in this scenario the fly, aka me, won!

I have seen this hatch many times where I live. It truly is an amazing thing to see what looks like a moving wall of these orange baby spiders. They are born and immediately they start to get ready to fly to make their new homes and the circle starts all over. Fly? Yes fly. The spiders will gather up a small amount of web and the wind will carry them away. Far away from my dining room window. Creepy huh?

Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers, email her at [email protected]

Really!