Spider and Frog

I feel kind of gross today and this writer’s block isn’t helping anything. The piles of number-crunching I need to get done this week also aren’t helping anything.

So on Friday night, I was dozing on the couch and my mom went to our back door to let the dogs out. When she opened the vertical blinds, she found herself face-to-face with a spider much like the one pictured at right. FUCKING HUGE, in other words. The spider was on the outside of the glass in her giant orb web and my poor mom was startled to death. In all the squealing and “Oh my GOD”-ing I woke up and promptly freaked the hell out.

I know I’ve told you a couple of spider stories before, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned that I have major psychological spider issues. In fact, just looking for a suitable picture to use in this entry has caused my throat and chest to tighten up and now I’m itchy all over.

And the sight of this enormous spider calmly pouncing on and eating a fly sent me into near-hysterics. I was seriously frozen on the couch, paralyzed with terror, tears streaming down my face, unable to move.

Finally after Mom and Jamie tried to talk me down a bit, I was able to get off the couch and get the fuck away from the huge spider. But I couldn’t stop watching. It’s this crazy train-wreck fascination or something.

It was too big to kill, and it was eating bugs attracted to the porch light, so we left it there, and stopped using the back door for the time being.

As of last night, she was still there, and by now everyone’s calling her Charlotte (of course) and watching with some interest. I can watch now if I stay far away from the door. Every night she builds a new web, spanning the entire width and about half the height of our sliding glass door, and that is truly fascinating to watch. She’s fast and fond of bouncing the web to catch stuff flying nearby, and our Charlotte is a bit of a gourmand – she skips on the little, not-tasty bugs in favor of the big juicy ones. On that first night, a grasshopper tried to attack her several times and she kicked the shit out of it. We, of course, were sitting on the other side of the glass (or across the room, in my case) squealing and gasping like a good audience should.

My mom ruined the web the other night by mistake – she intended to just clear the web strands away from the door latch, but when she hit them with a corn dog stick (weapon of choice) she discovered that they were anchor lines and she knocked the whole damn thing down. Way to go, Mom, corndogging the spider.

Last night, she had just finished her web and was hanging out in the middle when our dog started freaking out and we saw a frog sitting on the deck railing. It definitely had its eye on the spider.

We thought about intervening, but decided to let nature take its course. Over the next half-hour or so, we watched as the frog slowly, a millimeter at a time, made its way up toward the web.

And at one point, I was horrified to hear myself saying, “I kind of feel sorry for Charlotte. I hope the frog doesn’t win.”

Everyone else agreed and we kept watching. Charlotte was clearly freaking out, snipping off web lines and huddling down in the corner. Finally, all of a sudden she raced up toward the frog and we braced ourselves for a showdown. But all that happened was that she cleaned up some more of the web, and the frog went over to the side and proceeded to feast on whatever wasn’t getting caught in the web for the rest of the evening.

The frog and Charlotte, I believe, had come to an understanding.

Sammi and I are just waiting for the morning that we wake up to see “Some Pig” written in the web. That will kick ass.

11 Replies to “Spider and Frog”

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  2. the story of a girl and her era of discovery – of lovefor spiders, for bug death
    for mummified insect carcasses. …and how it all taught her to love childhood again.

  3. I'm glad you're another step closer to getting over your irrational fear of spiders. They truly are facinating and benefical to the home.
    I'm also misunderstood by the general public and feel if people just got to know me the could really get to like me.

  4. What the hell was the point of Charlots web anyway? Was it that she made people think the pig was talking. Clearly it was the spider. Were people really that dumb….WTF.

  5. Amazing how some things that have scared us to death in the past can have th veil torn away.
    Irrational fears are the hardest for those who DON'T have them to understand. But it's interesting how you seem to have tempered yours through simple observation and curiosity. My parents used to watch 'Nature' when I was younger, and I thought it must have been boring, until I sat down with them once and slowly became totally engrossed. I've seen hundreds of episodes since.

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