Departure

Last night I noticed a delightful new comment on my post about the spider in my front yard. It was written by a stranger who stumbled on this blog while doing research on her own marbled orbweaver. The commenter said she's scared of spiders, too. But then again, she got close enough to capture her spider, put it in a water bottle, and feed it ants, so maybe her kind of scared is more intellectual and curious, while mine is more Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Anyway, it reminded me that I forgot to share an update with you, which is that last week? Well ... down came the rain. And washed the spider out.

Believe it or not, I was quite sad to see him go. (Sad, and also a little afraid that maybe took a liking to me -- me, who would go outside a dozen times a day, stand under his web and squint up at him -- and moved into the guest room.) But every time I saw him, I felt a little proud that I hadn't yet squashed him flat. I was just ... cool, you know? Like, "Hey, orange spider. What's shakin."

And wherever he went, the others must have gone, too. I swear, for more than a week, every time I turned around there was another friggin' spider in my house. I'm thinking there must be some sort of spider season when the weather turns chilly, and they all come scrambling into your house to try to stay warm. I'm talking five, six, seven spiders a day! Tragically, many of them lost their little lives, but we were able to scoot a couple back into the great outdoors.

Where, now that I think about it, they probably went ahead and died from the cold. So I guess that wasn't so humane after all.