The Spider Dance and stories from the webs

Spider Dance

This morning I walked out of the garage door intending to check the letter box and straight into a huge spider web that had been craftily strung across that entrance overnight.  I’m sure you’ve all been there.  The brains message ‘sh*t there’s a monster, people-eating spider on me somewhere, probably on my head and about to attack my face’, is pipped at the post by the body hurtling into the ‘spider dance’.  In situations like this the body needs no direction from the brain – survival kicks in, by-passing the brain. To the accompaniment of the eerie high pitched shriek, instantly recognizable as the spider noise, the legs frantically lurch into the dance and spin me in circles while the arms windmill, madly brushing the hair and face and any part of my body that can be reached while my head cranes on my neck in a vain attempt to view the whole of my back to see where the dreaded spider is currently stalking me. Unable to see, but convinced the creature is there just out of my sightline, I rip off my top – heedless of the fact that I’m by this time in the middle of the driveway and in full view of the neighbours. When there is no sign of the spider on my top I now lean over and continue to frantically brush at my hair.  When I finally realize the spider is not actually on my body I begin to search my surroundings for it.  I spy the tattered web where I have broken through it and can see that by the probable size of the web the spider that had constructed it had to be really big.  Then I spy it huddling in what I would like to think of as fear of me, but is more likely in glee, up under the eaves.

Gathering the shreds of my dignity around me I replace my top, take a quick surveillance of the neighbourhood – no neighbours in sight, probably lurking, with snickers of laughter, behind curtains or closed doors – and continue to the letterbox.

Now the experts tell us that spiders string their webs across the probable flight paths of insects or near light sources so they can trap unwary food sources. This makes sense.  But at my place while there are hundreds of spiders that do just that, there is a small number who seem to have loftier ambitions.  I have lost count of the times I have walked into webs strung across the outside access doors of my house.  Call me paranoid, but maybe there is secret society of spiders that have ambitions to catch a human! Come to think of it, the size of these webs is bit of a giveaway isn’t it? – they are always huge.  Set up for larger human sized prey?  They are very cunning too.  For a time after I have been caught they wait until I’m lulled into a false sense of security or have forgotten and then overnight up goes a new trap and bam! there’s the spider dance again. Well I’m recovered now but will stay on yellow alert around doorways for a while whenever I go outside.

After all of this excitement, nay more like terror, I find my mind going back to the many spider encounter stories in the annals of the family.  So I thought I might post a few. Some are hilarious, but only if you are not the victim.  So read on.

Spider hunting story

Younger daughter [YD] has always been particularly frightened of spiders but always unwilling to kill them.  Once when she was a teenager she sat curled up in a ball on the lounge afraid to move for four hours, watching what she described as a giant huntsman spider, march across the opposite wall, and waiting for her father and me to come home and catch it. [I have been the spider catcher in the family for years.]

By the time we got home and she told the story, the spider was nowhere to be seen, despite a thorough search. Four days later I was walking past the wall where the spider had been, and noticed what appeared to be part of spider leg poking out from the edge of picture hung on the wall.  I got the latest top-of-the-line spider catching equipment, aka a bowl and a piece of cardboard, gave a reluctant YD a broom so she could move the picture while standing at a safe distance and I could quickly pop the bowl over the spider when it moved out.  Good plan, until the spider did move out and, reminiscent of the scene in ‘Jaws’, I jumped back in fear - “we need a bigger bowl”-.  It was the biggest huntsman I had ever seen.  However, brave and courageous mother that I am, I ran to get a really big bowl leaving YD, now standing on top of the lounge in the farthest corner of the room, to keep the spider in sight so we wouldn’t lose sight of it again.  I ran back and after a few heart stopping minutes managed to trap the spider in the bowl with YD declaring in the background “Very brave mummy!... very brave!”.  I then took the spider down to the back fence under the gum tree and released it.  Now this was the designated ‘spider releasing spot’ for years. And therein lies another story.

Under the gum tree I had lots of plant pots stacked upside down, one on top of the other for gardening purposes.  One day, some years after the “Jaws” event, I went down and picked up a pot and looked at the pot that had been underneath, to see to my horror it was covered in huntsman spiders of various sizes.  Thinking quickly through the shock; told you I was the brave and courageous one; I realized there may be others inside the pot I held, my hand covering the hole in the bottom. Carefully I turned the pot around and looked and sure enough there were spiders there as well.  I flung the pot away - brave and courageous only goes so far-, and had a quick look around all the other pots.  There were hundreds of huntsman spiders infesting the “drop off” area.  I raced inside and dragged the family out to see.  The closest I could figure was, for years whenever I took a spider down and dropped it off, it walked into the colony saying “Hi honey I’m home – she threw me out again”.  While I don’t like killing spiders, that’s why I catch and relocate them, this time I had to get in the exterminators.

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Funny spider story

Years later Youngest Daughter [YD] went with a friend to attend a Buddhist retreat out in the boondocks.  No sewer this far in the bush, so toilets were the old dunnies with the pan system. YD held out as long as she could and then, in fear and not a little disgust was forced to visit the dunny.  She got herself settled with her undies around her knees and reached out to get some toilet paper ready and put her hand right on top of huntsman spider. With her very own well-honed trademark ‘spider shriek’ – recognized by every family member  as ‘YD has encountered  a spider’ - , she leaped to her feet, burst out of the dunny with her undies still around her knees and ran  full pelt in a hilarious knock-kneed gait – off into the bush while her friend rolled around hysterically laughing.- She was NOT amused.

Funny Spider and snake story

Fast forward a few years.  YD Had agreed to check the house and collect the mail for us while her father and I went away on holidays. At that time we lived in a house where the only driveway was at the back of the house off another street.  The letter box however was down several levels on the street at the front of the house.  So the logical thing was for YD to drive to the letter box at the front, collect the mail and then drive around two blocks to the back of the house and check the house.

A few nights into the holiday I accessed a couple of messages on my phone about 10pm. These were from YD sent some hours before.  Voice message one- shrill panicky voice “ I’ve just picked up your mail and there, not 2 feet from me was a giant snake – frightened me half to death, so I scooped the mail up really quickly  and leaped in the car and took off before the snake could crush and eat me. 

As I hurtled off in the car and got a little way down the road, I glanced over and there was a large huntsman marching out from the mail and stalking towards me.  In my panic I drove up the gutter and leaped from the car.  I was dancing around calling for my mum to come and get the spider out, but you are away- big help you are! Then I considered going into a nearby house for help. But eventually, I don’t know how, I managed to get the spider out with a newspaper and bravely continued on my way, pushing away the thought that other scary creatures might be lurking.  You owe me big time.  I want a frock”. 

2nd message:  [a little bitterness and revenge creeping through the voice] “I am now in your house and I am smoking!  Not happy.”

Me and Spider story

Four years ago I had moved into my latest house and had a long haired carpet laid.  I was very happy with my house and a few weeks in I was walking up the stairs to go to bed at about 11 PM.  I looked up and saw a large huntsman – yes I know they seem to follow me, probably looking for revenge - up high on the wall on the next level.  Deciding I needed to catch it before it got into the bedroom and frightened me to death in the night by walking on my face, or before the cats investigated it and got bitten, I gathered my usual spider catching equipment. This time I could judge the right sized bowl needed.  I proceeded to try to catch it only to drive it further up the wall.  So cleverly, I got the broom to gently ’encourage’ it to come down where I could get it.  Unfortunately it dropped straight onto the long haired carpet and started straight for the bedroom. There I was on hands and knees frantically chasing it plopping the bowl down just a little too late to catch it.  Lucky for me but not so lucky for the spider, the long haired carpet must have made it like trying to run through long thick grass.  It seemed to run in slow motion lifting its legs high in a sort of staggering gait. This slowed it down enough so I just caught it in the doorway.  Breathing a sigh of relief I carried it down the stairs carefully opened the back door and stepped out straight into a large spider web strung across the doorway.  When I finished shrieking and doing a parody of the spider dance while still clutching the bowl, I placed the bowl on the bench and cleared the web from the doorway.  Then Through the remaining panicky shreds of thought, I realized it was best not to create another colony down the back of the new house and took the bowl out the front and released the spider into the gutter, whereupon it lurched across the road toward another house.  I imagined I could almost hear its footsteps because it was so big.  I had a momentary bout of guilt about launching the spider onto the new neighbours, but eventually after a short struggle, brushed that aside and went inside to settle down before going up to bed.  In hindsight I suppose this should have sent a few warning signals up about spiders and doorways and paranoid thoughts I wrote about in the 1^st post.  But then I was blissfully unaware.  

Nowadays I am learning how to live in harmony most of the time with the spiders that inhabit my yard and house. There are some lovely stories about the various types of spiders that I will share sometime in the future.  This time it’s been about the funny encounters.