Rescuing Spiders

Last night I rescued a spider from my bathtub. The water was already filling the bottom of the tub and I spotted the little darlin' just in the nick of time. He was like a little beachcomber trying to outrace the tide. I turned off the water.

He tried to elude my rescuing hand, scurrying around and trying to run vainly up the slippery sides of the tub. Giant hands swooping down from above don't exactly spell comfort to creatures only half an inch wide. I managed to get it crawling on my fingers and then went to my balcony door in my birthday suit and released him into the wilds.

I'm going through a "spider time" right now, as I have off and on over the years. Spiders appear in my hair, tickling my legs, suspended from my eyelashes (enough to make you go cross-eyed trying to look at them), and are regularly appearing in my house. I even had a lttle spider living right by my front door which my mother dubbed "The Guardian at the Gate" until one of Jeff's well-meaning friends poked its web down. (Sadly, it hasn't returned yet.)

My favourite spider time memory is from years ago. I was working at a cashier at a gas station and the boss's shrewish wife was talking to me when all of a sudden her eyes got big and round and she stopped talking and just pointed at me with a dreadful look on her face. I looked down and saw that a little brown house spider had found its way into my shirt pocket and was now poking its two front legs and face over the pockets edge like a puppy begging on its hind legs. I just laughed and said that spiders like me.

Yes, spiders like me and I like them. It wasn't always so though.

I used to HATE them. I was terrified. It really wasn't the creature themselves, it was their UNEXPECTEDNESS. The way they would suddenly scuttle out of a dark corner or drop down from the top of their web. And besides, they were ugly. Or so I thought at the time.

But Grandma Marty thought I was being a foolish little girl. Spiders were lucky, she asserted, and good for the garden too. They ate the bad bugs. Surely I wasn't afraid of something so small.

"Look", she said, taking me into the guest bathroom in her house, "See that spider in the bathtub? I'm giving it to you. It can be your pet". (I was always asking to have a pet because we didn't have any in my household.)

"But Grandma!" I wailed, "I can't have a spider for a pet!"
"Why not?", she said. "Give it a name!"

And so I contemplated that spider in Grandma's tub, and acknowledging my petless state, I gave it a name. Charlotte, of course.

And it's funny, because although I can't remember much else about that particular spider, I went on to have a series of spider pets.

I fondly remember Dorothy, a golden and white-speckled orb weaver who wove her web nightly on the outside of my bedroom window. I would thoughtfully provide a steady stream of crane flies for her, and I got quite a bloodthirsty rush watching her jump down on them and spin them into a little struggling coccoon to eat later. (There was Dorothy II and III too.)

And Albert, the little black wolf spider who got so tame that he'd rush out of my bedroom corner and take wriggling treats from my fingertips.

And the hairy, possibly poisonous spider that met its end on the bottom of my mother's bedroom slipper as I screamed aghast, "Angela!"

I even kept a little spider in a jar on my desk at school for a while, ostensibly for a science project, but really it was a pet. Note to others: this really doesn't score you "cool" points with the popular kids. But I didn't really mind. Spiders are lucky, you see.

And now that I am a grownup, I continue to like them.

When I see one in the bathtub, I rescue it. Next time you see one in yours, please try to liberate it. Give it a name first if it helps.

Just think of me, and DON'T SQUISH 'EM! :)