So, today’s post was going to be about graduation and chrysalises (chrysali?) opening and little birds leaving nests, but I have bigger topics than blah-blah-blah life transitions. At a time when there are many very important things happening, I happen to be  preoccupied with spiders. I haven’t wanted to say anything before because if people associate you with the word “infestation” or “pestilence” or “nest of arachnoid horrors” they don’t want to visit anymore, but things aren’t improving as I’d hoped, and I can’t keep walking around pretending it is all okay. No, every morning I walk around like this:

No, Mom, I couldn’t put on lipstick or a little blush for this photo. Or comb my hair. Or change out of my bathrobe. Well, I  could have done one or more of those things, but obviously, I didn’t.

I walk around like this searching for long legged yellow spiders, about three quarters of an inch across (including appendages.) They prefer the ceiling, but I have found them dangling in the air right in front of my face, and on the countertop six inches from where I have set down my coffee. I have seen them skittering manically and sitting still as death. Deceptively still, because they are rarely dead. The skittering begins after I attack them with my weapon of choice: a grabber clutching a paper towel. If I am lucky and hit it just right, I’ll squish it immediately and usually messily, but I am more likely to alarm it (hence the skittering) and knock it loose, so it falls to the floor (more skittering) or on me (screaming and gesticulating–me, not the spider.) My secondary weapon is the vacuum cleaner with the upholstery attachment on the long extension. This was great at first, because the spider rarely ran or fell, but we have a universal vac that sucks everything into a container in the basement and I have begun having nightmares about what is waiting for me down there. That thing is going to have to be emptied someday. Someday soon.

It wasn’t always like this. The first year we had these spiders I saw one and I thought, Okay, spiders are good, they eat other insects and they rarely cause harm. As long as you aren’t ON me or NEAR me or ON STUFF I TOUCH, I can live with you, Mr. Spider. But it wasn’t just one spider, it never is. I read once that on Earth, you are rarely more than a few meters from a spider. Disturbing, I thought, but I can handle that. Most of those have to be inside the walls or otherwise concealing themselves. It really is only the spiders I see that bother me. Well, the ones I see AND the ones biding their time in my vacuum container plotting their revenge. Once I realized that my friend Mr. Singular Spider had broken our truce by actually being multiple spiders, I attempted catch and release. With terrible results. Spiders are quite fragile, you know? You might try to trap one under a jar and slide a piece of cardboard in to contain it, but unspeakable things will happen and you will end up killing it anyway, probably out of mercy and with revulsion at the monster you yourself have become. Or that might be just me. Spider bombs! my neighbor says. Best thing! Probably yes, they are. I don’t know enough about them. They are probably very benign to everything except spiders and aren’t really the clouds of death I imagine settling on my laptop, dishes, doorknobs and bedding. Also, a spider who survives a spider bomb would not under any circumstances mutate into a super spider, therefore I would never have to worry about that. Nope.

So now every morning I walk the house, hunting spiders, apologizing to every single one I kill, obsessing over whether its kin are watching and how they feel about the whole spectacle, worrying about that vacuum container that I now imagine is pulsing with retribution. And then I move on to the gauzy egg sacs, hidden at the edge of the ceiling, looking for all the world like just another bead of popcorn and holding hundreds more skittering, web-spinning, tickly-legged vermin.  These things are a lesson on  the wages of the sin of procrastination. Have you put off doing a term paper until the last minute? Ignored a dish of leftovers in the fridge until it is unrecognizable? These are nothing compared to finding that an egg sac you meant to clean up has disgorged its contents and it is only a matter of time before you will be swimming in the things. Frankly, I am wasting valuable time right now writing about it. Back to the front lines, for despite my trepidation, this is war. Until one of them pulls a Charlotte and spins me a surrender message indicating their retreat I will be annihilating every one of them I can reach. They can keep their business outside, and, okay,  I may turn a blind eye in my garage, but that is where I draw the line. NOT in MY HOUSE.