I feel like I’m growing

Last night, I had an adrenaline rush. When I got home and went into my bedroom to take off my shoes, I noticed a large brown spider running at full speed across the floor. Towards me. It looked like the same brown recluse I’d been hiding from for a few days, that had taken occupancy of the living room while I’d holed up in my bedroom, in fetal position. Now, it had invaded my sanctuary. Shit.

I flew into the kitchen to get a clear plastic cup (the spider Cone of Silence) from my cupboard (which I’d obtained for this purpose, exactly). I covered said arachnid, then just...breathed for a few minutes. What the hell do I put underneath as the floor with which to pick it up and “escort it outside” (Adam’s term, not mine, though I wish it was)? Something thick enough that doesn’t flop down and let it escape, but something thin enough to fit under the cup with minimum liftage, so as not to let it escape. And above all, something that enables me to lift the spider up and away without touching it. Illustration board? Yes! I used a piece that I’ve been working on and slid it home, under the cup, neatly making the little guy step up onto it. I proceeded to escort it outside.

A mere six months ago, in the same situation, I would have taken my shoe and bludgeoned it till it was dead. I would have made it a stain on the floor. But something happened a few months ago that changed my outlook on the eight-leggeds. I noticed one day that a daddy long legs had begun camping out in the corner of my shower, close to the ceiling. It was too precarious to set my stepstool in the tub to get up there and squish it, so I silently made a deal with it. I said, ‘You stay up there when I’m using this area, and I’ll leave you alone, too.’ And by Jove, it kept up its end of the bargain. For several days, it remained in the corner, whenever I was in the shower. When I was not in the shower, and was just generally using the bathroom, sometimes it would come down, do its little spider business. Then it was back in the corner by morning. I felt grateful. It was ever-so-nice to be able to trust that this little creature was going to actually honor my request, even though it wasn’t consciously deciding to do it.

A week or two later, it was gone. I figured it had either gone off to look for a more promising food supply, nomad that it was, or its life span was up. I stopped thinking about the spider entirely. A couple weeks after that, I saw that it was back, in the same corner hangout. And I shit you not, I exclaimed, out loud, “Hey, where’ve you been? Ya go on vacation? What are you doing back here? Don’t you know there are no bugs in here?”...Or something like that.

Is it so wrong to talk to a spider??

I mean, you live in your place, and then suddenly, another sentient being kind of becomes your roommate. You’re sharing space with another creature. You have to be civil. It respected your desire for it not to crawl on you when you were all soapy and defenseless, and you respected it by letting it live. That sort of invites dialogue, doesn’t it? At least an “I wish you well”.

So. Now I finally see spiders not as the enemy, but as beings as deserving of life as I am. Who knew? But I still don’t want to look at them too closely, even though they are rather graceful in their movements, because, dammit, they have no face. At least nothing that I can identify as a face. And I don’t want them in my bedroom, either, where they can skate across my face at night and I’d never know it. But if they violate the agreement, then they need to be evicted. That’s life in the big city, Sparky...