Authors Note: This article will talk about spiders. I will have pictures that are spoilered. Those pictures will be of jumping spiders with water droplet hats.
No, that tagline is not a joke. I have bathroom spiders. This afternoon, I saw one hiding behind the little space heater we keep in there because the heating/air unit doesn’t circulate the air that far. I greet my little roommate and tuck the heater in the way so the fuzz-beast will not be able to eat them. And I had a weird little thought.
So, to start off, I clearly love spiders. I have no fear. I have also read about spiders. A lot. Spiders are just the best.
Over the summer we were at a friends house. It was fairly early in the morning. Our friend had asked us to grab something from an outside storage unit. My spouse when to grab it and I just here, “Oh fuck.”
I ask what’s up, and he says there is a black widow in the case. Now, my friend has two small dogs and a cat, a few chronic conditions, and a wife with a bit of the same. We had no way to safely deal with her. So, we ask forgiveness from the little guy, and whatever spirit it’s attached to, and he kills her painlessly. I ask about preserving her, and he says they decay too fast.
It occurred to me that I had never seen one in real life. So, I take a look.
Nothing I read had prepared me for how BIG this spider was. I was under the impression that they were small. That is not the case. They also didn’t prepare me for how absolutely stunning the markings are. The photo below does not do it justice. The markings were crisp, perfect, and blood red. I was expecting something the size of a thumbnail, not the whole damn thumb. I was shook.
So, why am I talking about this silly shit? Well. I listen a lot to a podcast called Random Number Generator Horror Podcast #9 by the creators of Welcome To Nightvale. One host was never interested in, and almost outright despised horror films. The other host is a horror buff. They role a dice and pick a movie based off style and the type of villain or sub-genre. One thing the non-horror fan always brings up with classic films like Psycho or The Shining, and how he had heard of these films, and knew about them from the cultural zeitgeist, but it was very different from his perceptions. I felt like that with the spider.
The purpose of this long ramble is that pictures and images and word of mouth cannot do justice to real life. No amount of VR can replace the feeling of being in nature. No video or article can really prepare you for experiencing a creature up close that you have never seen with your own eyes, even if you’ve read about them hundreds of times before. No meme or write-up of Psycho actually captures the complete picture.
So keep that in mind, and go out and seek a new experience.
-Ana
When I was a little girl, I was terrified of spiders. They still make me jump a little now, but I am kind to them. I don't kill them, but try to relocate them. I don't have to worry about too many, though, because with three cats in the house, spiders are an endangered species for sure.
Yes. I love spiders. Great little assets to our nature. And some of those "karate dance steps" were created by entering those webs. What work out😊