Does Whatever a Spider Can.

The following post is dedicated to my academe blogging superhero(ine), Alfina the Vague, from whom I plagiarized, openly, the thematic material, and even a little bit of the style.

I was walking to UNCW last night around midnight, for the following three reasons: (1) there are not herds of shambling undergrads in the library between midnight and three, and hence I have less cause to fear inane cellular phone banter, or my laptop being thieved; (2) all the reference texts of which the school only possesses one copy, which is to say nearly all of them, are typically not in use by another MA student and are subsequently likely to be on the shelf at midnight; (3) I walk the earth by dark and crave the flesh of the living. Hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? Sure, inexpensive draft Miller High Life can slake my undead hunger and thirst for the quick, but I cannot deaden, er, liven, my need to walk under the moon and the stars. But neither can the spiders, lovely things that they are, as compelled by their nature as any vampire or zombie.

I believe that the variety of arachnid that I stumble near, and across, and sometimes into, on these nocturnal fact-finding probes is a relative of the European garden spider. It’s too far south for it to be of that exact grouping, but it matches the picture and the characteristics pretty well. I understand full well that my walking into the nets of one of these is going to cause me no greater harm than a tremendous sensation of ick, but, c’mon, don’t we all have enough ick in our lives, already? And the damned things like to build across sidewalks, half the time, as if one of them really thinks that it can take me down. No, spider, you’re going to annoy me, making me put aside my higher, self-aware, spiritual bond with all other animals and ergo cast you to the ground and squishify you. No, that isn’t a word. Luckily for the spiders, the street lamps tend to help me pick up their nasty, tenacious practical joke before I wreck their homes and then have to kill them before witnesses arrive.

But I am ambivalent, I must admit. My reaction to anything lacking a spine that crawls on eight legs and builds things by its own organic secretions, my being a vertebrate and all, is natural enough: it’s a bit like looking at your ruralite uncle’s unrestored ’73 Monte Carlo, and thinking “that’s actually your car?” Only in this instance, the antiquated item is a billion or so years older than me, the new model, and so I feel weirdly impelled to destroy webs and ant hills as a satisfying affirmation of my animal modernity. Call me vain.

But I really am rather captivated by orb-spinning arachnids, and the sheer amount of work that they get done in an evening. Were the next hurricane to level my apartment, rather than merely tear the siding off it and remove my address, (as Ophelia did, hopelessly confusing all shipping companies and taxi drivers), I’m entirely certain that I wouldn’t be able to rebuild it in a day. Given the proper materials, I’m not certain I could rebuild the spider’s home in a day. I’m not much with a loom, I fear.

Additionally this variety seems to have a certain developed level of instinct: if I toss leaves into their webs, they do not immediately react; they seem to be waiting to see if the caught object will struggle or not, differentiating between edible and inedible captures. They eventually will move to the leaves, cut them from the web, and drop them. It’s really quite remarkable.

If only they’d just stay in the bushes, and away from the sidewalk, I’d simply enjoy the show and leave well enough alone. But I walk the earth by night, you see, and so do they, and inevitably we must brush against one another. So before I mash the next arachnid I mash, I’d like to sit him down and have a talk, about how I’m acting within the precepts of nature, extraneous to the confines of invented human constructs like “ethics” and “justice.” I want my spider to understand, in his little spider logic, that this is the way this hard world works, and unfair as it is: you—ancient, stupid, small, bug; me—modern, vertebrate, intelligent, large primate. I hate to say it, but there’s just not room for both of us in this town.