Picture this: You just got absolutely ass-fucked by an exam, you ran out of food and don’t have time to go get any before your next class, your laptop powered off and won’t turn back on no matter what you do, and you finally get a chance to simply open your window and enjoy what little you can of the nice weather since you’ve been stuck inside via Zoom university all day, when out of the corner of your eye, something scurries across the window.
If you can picture this, first of all, I’m so sorry, and second, you can then imagine my displeasure upon finding a gargantuan, lustrous-rumped, gangly-legged, octo-eyed, bitch-ass orb weaver staring at me from its tiny nest of butt string that had materialized in my window.
Yes, I cried.
Yes, I envisioned it sitting there, laughing.
So, with foggy, mascara-stained glasses, I waited for the quarter-sized beast to get in position, then slammed my window shut, crushing the spidey and all its little spidey guts.
I vowed never to open that window again.
So, the next day I opened the other window, and not 15 minutes went by before another hairy beast appeared, staring me down like the animal it’s named for. I watched the pincers of this wolf spider tingle with excitement at the thought of eating human (in retrospect, I don’t think they’re actually harmful, but don’t tell past me that), and thought, “Why, God, why? (maybe if I believed in one…)”, before flushing it down the toilet.
I have since encountered a total of 18 spiders across two weeks, which is absolutely unacceptable, though not surprising for Southside. My neighbor killed a house centipede the other day with one of those expensive textbooks your professor requires but you never actually open, and I’ve heard rumors of mice, but spider after spider came for me, and no one else in my building seemed to be having this problem. My boyfriend, however, had spiders emerge from his car engine while driving almost every night for about a week, so maybe it’s me…
My neighbor joked that my little situation seemed like “a plague to come,” and we all laughed and chuckled.
Then the gnats arrived.
Seriously, what’s next? A swarm of locusts? Darkness for three days? A plague? Wait… Shit.
Perhaps this is a sign; maybe I’m meant to try to understand the spiders, get on their level. I decided to catch one and study its movements while tapping on the glass of its enclosure and accidentally chopping off parts of its legs. Based on my research, I will attempt crawling across walls over the weekend, eating gnats that I catch, and maybe even hiding in a shoe.
Or maybe I’m being haunted by the ghosts of all the spiders I’ve killed in my 20 years. Who knows!
I will say that there is one good thing to come out of this whole situation, and it’s the discovery that CT Cups make great spider pooters!
