How to Befriend Spiders Without Really Trying
I worry about two things when moving into a new place: is it infested with bed bugs, and what’s the spider situation?
When I see an itsy-bitsy being in my space, I instinctively consider it personal. If it’s a spider, I’m certain an attack is underway. When I see those horrid things hanging around the microwave one minute and gone the next, I assume it’s reporting the lay of the land to its spindly coalition. “He’s cowering on the couch. I say we move out.” Then they fill their tiny muskets with gunpowder and march on.
My coexistence with the spider has primarily led to genocide. Most of the eight-legged beasts I’ve come across have been flattened and cursed back to hell. I leave the corpse out in the open to set an example for the others as if to say don’t try it. If my girlfriend is around, she takes the live ones outside for me. I’m told this is the proper response, this forced public transportation. But if it were up to me, she knows that shoes and notebooks would fly in retaliation for their existing.
The outdoors are safe; it’s been agreed upon as the demilitarized zone. If I lock eyes with a spider out there, we know it behooves us both to behave. But down under the facade, our blood curdles with pure hatred for one another. At least for one party.
After moving to the Pacific Northwest, my spider worries have dwindled because I’m surrounded by them. Once a hair-raising concept, over-exposure has now numbed my fears about the spider. The only thing that’s heightened is my awareness of them. I’ve since confronted my consternation head-on by striking up a friendship or two.
There’s a spider that moved in by the light outside of our apartment. For all intents and purposes, we’ll call it him, and him Bernie. Bernie is an orb-weaver with an unquestionably fat ass. My former self would’ve referred to him as “scary” or “very scary,” of which he is both. I’ve seen Bernie take down Africanized mosquitoes and decapitate other winged insects in broad daylight, and that’s only when he allows me to look. But never once did Bernie cat-call me. I passed him every day. Little by little, my butthole unpuckered.
Whenever I’d walk by Bernie on the steps, I’d wave. I knew he had no idea how to do that back, but it felt right. When we got comfortable with each other’s presence, I’d send a little wind his way. A playful little blow to say hello. I did this because I didn’t know how else to correspond with him; the waving had lost its charm. Sometimes he’d gracefully fall, like a beat in a corde lisse act. He’d hold for applause then climb back up, proud of the stunt he’d worked so hard to grace me with. “I really impressed him today!” I imagine Bernie writing in his journal, post-performance. He developed into a bona fide thespian.
There were times when I blew Bernie and he did nothing. He might’ve been depressed. I guess spiders can have bad days, too. Though I’ve never caught him with a lover, only with headless food; woe is Bernie. I suppose he’s asexual, but I don’t judge. He is my friend.
I once startled Bernie with my daily wind so bad that I’m certain he had a seizure. I’ve never seen a spider gyrate in the way that Bernie did. I thought he might’ve been winding up to jump, like an untethered jack-in-the-box head. If that were to happen, a quick slap of the hand would’ve certainly ended our friendship. There was no leap; he just kept shaking his fat ass in place.
I was appalled. Frankly, I had a sizeable kill count going but this somehow felt different, as if I had murdered someone I’d agreed to meet for coffee. Before I had the willpower to pull out a camera to capture what I believed to be his death throes, Bernie had collapsed onto his webbed bed. After a few tense moments, he twitched and, without missing a beat, lunged for a fly. My friend was still alive.
Maybe Bernie was putting me on to teach me a lesson. “Don’t blow so hard next time!” I imagined him shouting. It was as though I had given him an avocado when he specifically told me avocados make him go into anaphylactic shock. I haven’t blown hard since. I’m conscious of my human-to-spider interactions because of Bernie’s frightening fit. Now I do the arithmetic in my head: a little blow to me could be a hurricane to Bernie.
With the onset of fall, I’ve noticed more and more spiders lingering outside of our apartment. This usually would make my skin crawl, but knowing that Bernie’s got company for the holidays makes me happy.
Jay and Ryan, the twins, have holed up outside of our storage closet. Scarlett made an intricate henna design above the mailboxes; I’m no longer forced to duck to get into mine as she’s since moved away to — what I assume to be — an artist commune. And it looks like Bernie’s allowed a couple of moochers to crash in the siding crevices near his place.
The spider-infested landscape of the Pacific Northwest has become a beautiful system in which I am merely a particle.
But not everyone’s as friendly as Bernie. Real threats live here, too. Ones that could put a real damper on my relationship with Bernie if I were under the assumption that one bad egg can ruin a whole dozen.
Though dreaded, I’m vaguely obsessed with finding a black widow. I’ll stop at every thicket of web along hikes to find one, not knowing at all what I’d do if I did. These guys are pretty compact for their strength, but not always that deadly. As a kid, I had an anatomically incorrect rubber black widow that misconstrued its actual size. I’m glad they are smaller.
Then there’s the colloquial hobo spider who hides in shoes and wood piles. The idea of this one leads me to check my slippers with a bare hand, even though my foot’s protected by a layer of sock. The logic behind this likely sounds flawed because it is. I learned most of what I know about this spider — otherwise known as the brown recluse — from Kevin Smith’s opus, Tusk. That said, I have found mixed results when it comes to their danger levels; not all of them turn you into a walrus.
I don’t want to come off as some sort of arachnologist. Truth be told, I don’t care if any of what I’ve said is littered with faux pas. My knowledge of spiders is limited to what I choose to type into the search bar. So what if recluses and hobo spiders aren’t the same? They’re both brown.
What I do know is that if you encroach on spider territory, you’re gonna get the fangs. The last thing they want to do is fend off an intruder, but they’ll do it if they have to. “Honey, you’ll never gonna believe what happened to me today,” a spider recounts to his spider wife with a bloodied shirt.
The thought of these daddies makes us want to scratch an itch that isn’t there. For whatever reason, these creeping associations happen when we even think about them. I can’t recall a time when a spider made contact with my skin and caused me to itch. I do recall some screaming.
The likelihood that spiders know we’re talking about them is probably pretty low. But we itch the spots anyway since everyone’s on the same page that spiders really hate that. No matter what I tell myself, the chance of them crawling on me is not at all affected by how many Google images I scroll through. But even that phantom itch phenomenon is something I’m getting past by living here.
I’m not saying I’m not scared of Bernie or that he doesn’t make me itchy sometimes, but it is much better that we established the three-feet-away rule early on. We have boundaries as any friendship should. We’re a rare case, like Carrie and Mr. Big minus the sex and the age gap. It works for us, no matter how it looks. Though I’m friends with Bernie, I can’t say I love all spiders equally.
Take Craig for instance. He just looks like a dick. He’s what you’d envision a mean spider to be: dark, long-legged, and cranky. If spiders could smoke, Craig would puff Marlboro reds to intimidate you.
Craig is what they boringly call the common house spider: sweet guys that resemble humanoids out of a Cronenberg film. Technically domesticated, their name says it all: they want to be indoors. To see them out in the open is an anomaly. If one breaks into your home, you’re supposed to leave it be and not make it a common outdoor spider. Otherwise, it’ll die. This, I’m told, is great for most people.
I get it. If Craig were inside, I’d immediately start swinging and tell him to leave. Craig’s a big boy, a formidable little bastard. But if Craig’s a common house spider, why’s he on the outdoor steps? Maybe our human neighbors across the hall kicked him out. Or maybe he’s lost. We’ve all been there.
Had we opted for a house, I’d probably send Craig to the basement. If Craig came back up, I’d tell him “bad spider” and repeat the process with the communal cup and magazine until he took the hint. I, of course, would let my girlfriend do the moving; I’m but the idea guy.
If we were anywhere else I would’ve met a different crew of spiders altogether. My opinion of their kind would then be based on how we all got along. As it stands, Bernie and his pals (and Craig) are what I’ve got, and my opinion of them is (mostly) positive.
Now, when I first saw Craig, I wanted to squash him and his entire family. My immediate reaction when seeing a greasy spider is to go back to my original feelings about the spider: get it the fuck away from me. It’s a knee-jerk that comes with having two legs. But if you take a moment to look at a spider — from a safe distance, through the lens of your phone’s zoomed-in camera — you start to notice that they’re as scared and unique as we are.
I stepped near Craig and he didn’t move. For a spider, that means one of three things: Craig is catatonic, Craig is plotting his next move, Craig is dead. When seeing a spider, the best-case scenario is that it is dead. Death is your last interaction with anything. If you see a corpse, your relationship with the being that previously wasn’t a corpse is through. That’s the end. They exist in your memory or in the winds of Nevada or in your backyard.
I thought for sure Craig was a goner. If not now, soon. He looked like one of those edible bugs you’d find at Jungle Jim’s, all dehydrated as if he’d been sitting next to a fire for too long.
But spiders are smart. Once shacked up on the second step, Craig’s since graduated to the fourth. This all happened within a week. So either Craig’s a strategic mastermind who shares genes with a possum or he’s just really slow. At any rate, he’s inching his way toward the Bernie threshold without any urgency.
I don’t think Bernie’ll give Craig a hard time; it’s not in his nature. If anything, it’ll be the other way around. But Bernie is certainly the gatekeeper of the staircase. He knows the trade route like the back of his tarsus, well aware of any happenings or shipments that come in and out. Bernie will protect and do what is best for his community, amicably or through bloodshed. Though I don’t want it to come to contention, I’m sure Bernie will at least call Craig an asshole because he most certainly is one.
For now, we are at an impasse; Bernie’s got the warmth of his light, and Craig’s gaining ground as fast as Craig feels like it. The roaring fall winds of Washington aside, the neighborhood has been quiet. More and more legged things are seeking refuge from the looming weather; unfortunately, Craig is one of them. My hope is that we can all at least live near each other in peace.
Bernie has allowed me to appreciate and respect the spider. Though different species, we’re similar. We work hard for our meals, protect what is ours, and at least once try to devour the heads of our enemies. It comforts me to have Bernie there by the light. He’s taught me quite a bit in the short time we’ve been acquainted.
As I took my daily walk today, Bernie wasn’t there. It’s possible he moved on or away, but I don’t fault him for not saying goodbye. He is a spider, after all. Our friendship was unlikely, but not impossible. I will miss him.
If he ever decides to come back and needs a place to stay, he’s got a spot in our apartment as long as I don’t know he’s there.
