Eugie would be amused today. We had a rule in our house: Don’t hurt the spider people. Yes, Eugie called them spider people. Our home was not only a no kill zone for spiders, it was a “don’t touch them and let them have their own home in our home” zone. (This was brought into question when we got Hobkin, as he did not live by the same rules and thought spiders were delicious.) Part of this came from both of our tendencies not to kill things just for the hell of it, but much of it dates to our old home.
You see Eugie hated millipedes and centipedesâwhich I shall call leggy worms from this point on. She was phobic of them. She’d scream like a little girl if one came upon her suddenly, and once being a little girl, she knew what that scream was like. One of my jobs in life was to keep them away from her. I took my job seriously.
Long ago now, unknown builders started a huge construction site near us, turning the farm land that surrounded our little subdivision into a lot more subdivision. When they did so, any animal that lived in that farm land raced through our subdivision, and sometimes, our home. It was the year of mice. But when they started, it was apparently the season of leggy worms, and millions upon millions of them swept over the neighborhood. A million is probably way too low. The streets were no longer grey, but had a solid red carpet of millipedes. If you drove, you killed hundred with each roll of your wheel. If you walked outside, you would leave pale shoe-shaped patches of death. There was no avoiding them.
And leggy worms can get into your house. And so they did. But we lived in a duplex, with everything but the garage and an, at that time, unfinished great room at ground level, so as the weekend of the leggy worm plague progressed, we saw none. That was till we went downstairs. The door to the garage was not so tightâenough of a gap for an army of the things to get in. Except they didnât. A few spiders had set up shop. They had spun their webs along the bottom of that door, so any leggy worms that came through wiggled into a trap. And these were large and skilled spiders. Their web was less a piece of art and more industrial strength equipment. The leggy worms were big, but the web was stronger. The spider people didnât catch one of two. They caught hundreds. The web looked like a leggy worm burritoâwhite silk on the outside around a thick tube of red. It was impressive. I canât imagine what any of my neighbors without spiders must have experienced, but Iâm guessing they had unpleasant nights.
Eugie looked at the burrito web, shuddered, and turned to me and said, âThey [the spiders} get to stay.â Theyâd earned their keep. They didnât get all of their prey (I wasnât keeping that death tube in the house, and it was way more than they could eat in a year anyway), but they did OK. And our truce was made with the spider people. Well, until Hobkin.
So today as I walked about the house I saw a relatively large dark something by the front door, though hovering a bit off the floor. It seems a spider had set up there in the last day, and a leggy worm and slunk in. The spider wonâor is in the midst of winning. Iâll wait a bit before intervening. The spider person has earned her prize so I can wait a day to neaten the field of battle. Perhaps Iâll play some song, something played by our accessories, or her accessories, after the great wars of olden days to commemorate what is and has been. A song to the spider people. We all need our myths.
Eugieâs ghost has been kept safe from the evil of the leggy worms by the vigilance of the spider people. Which is how it should be.