A Little Early Halloween?

What is it with the spiders lately?

Remember Spiderzilla from a few weeks ago?

Well, he's back.

I came home from work the other day and there sat the beast, rather cheekily, on my door in front of God and country, as if waiting for me to invite him inside for a cup of tea.

He must have been out of his little spider goggles.

After passing around to several friends the picture I took of Spiderzilla, we deduced that he is probably a male hobo spider.

A very LARGE male hobo spider.

Or Aggressive House Spider as he is affectionately known.

How charming.

They actually aren't that bad. Initially, their bite was considered extremely venomous that could cause horrible damage to a person should they be bitten, but I don't believe that to be the case anymore. Their bite can probably still make some people very sick, especially if they are allergic to insect or arachnid venom, but it shouldn't actually kill anyone.

Or maybe I just tell myself that for comfort knowing that monstrosity is hanging out outside my front door.

If the little beast bites you, you might still want to go to the emergency room.

I'm not afraid of spiders. I don't really care that they have overtaken my crawl space and found their way into my house at random times. Spiderzilla hasn't yet, but one of his friends did. I really was more worried about what a hobo spider bite would do to one of my cats rather than myself as they are smaller, and maybe their bodies can't process venom the same way as humans. That worry was laid to rest the other day when I found yet another hobo spider – the smaller but spitting image of the beast tapping at my chamber door the other day – curled up in death on one of my carpeted step.

I underestimate my cats, I think. They are adorable, sweet, furry darlings with huge eyes and the overwhelming need for cuddles, but they are also ruthless killing machines. If they were five times their size, I would be their prey and cuddles would not cross their minds. I must remember that cats, like humans, enjoy killing for fun. They play with their food. Sometimes they won't even eat their food, and I think they get some kind of sick pleasure out of torturing smaller, less fortunate creatures than themselves.

This spider had no chance. One of my cats, I assume Percy or Willow as Puckett usually doesn't care, played with and tortured this supposedly venomous creature until they killed it. Then lost interest in it and left it for me to find. If the creature was all that dangerous or had managed to bite one of my cats, I would have had a sick animal on my hands by now, but they have happily gone on with their lives as though nothing had ever happened.

I, on the other hand, mourned the poor creature.

That doesn't mean I want it's larger older brother to find some way into my house. That thing is still roughly the size of a fifty cent piece, and while it may not be aggressive or as venomous as the story books like to say, is still not something I want in my house.

I no longer worry about venomous creatures in my house though. The cats will take them out, lickety split.

I do still wonder, however, why Spiderzilla felt the need to greet me coming home from work by perching blatantly on my door. As I didn't want the beast in my house, I didn't open the door until I had prodded him off the door with my trusty railroad tie, the same piece I'd used the last time to shoo him off my walkway.

He scrambled onto the tie and began marching deliberately toward my hand.

I dropped the tie and he crawled between planks of my front porch.

I wondered, briefly, where exactly that leads to. My crawl space? Under the house? Somehow into my living room which is attached to the crawl space? I may eventually find him sitting on my couch, scrolling through Netflix.

On the one hand, I'm not too worried about that as Percy or Willow will handle it.

On the other hand, I don't really want him to get in here because 1.) ew, and I don't want to find him in my bed; and 2.) the cats will no doubt murder him and he didn't get that big and that cheeky by getting himself murdered easily.

He has to be pretty old. It would be a shame to end his life now just because he's careless.

Then this weekend, I bought a bottle of Portuguese Rose wine. California Guy and I opened it to enjoy as an aperitif, and in it was floating a tiny white spider.

Really? In my wine?

Now granted the winery was probably just extremely careless in bottling, and had managed to trap the little booger in there. But still. A perfectly good bottle of wine and there's a spider floating in it.

I felt like that meant something.

Something other than a careless bottler, intent on ruining my enjoyment of wine.

Like no drinking that night.

Right, like that stopped us. We opened a bottle of Bordeaux.

They seem to be everywhere, these spiders.

I found another what I assume was a hobo spider floating in the cats' water dish, looking as dead as the one I found on the steps. I carried the water bowl upstairs and dumped it into the sink. Next thing I knew, that thing came alive and started scrambling all over the sink while I frantically tried to scoop him back into the water dish so I could throw him outside. At one point he made a beeline for my fingers, and I dropped the water dish into the sink sending him scurrying into the drain.

Thank God he didn't go into the drain only to emerge several hours later to surprise me while cooking.

Or show up in my wine again.

Even at work they are cropping up in the weirdest places. I was helping a lady print her pages, just innocently taking money and releasing print jobs, and here came this rather interesting-looking fellow just scurrying across the Reference Desk like he owned it. He was large, black, and had white spots. I thought he might be a bold jumper, but he didn't stop long enough for me to look, and the lady I was helping started giving me funny looks because of the funny looks I was giving the spider.

At least she didn't see it. I can imagine the scream now.

I pulled a blank medicine card the other night, and since one is meant to put in their own animal when one pulls that card, I immediately, and without thought, mentally put in the spider.

Spiders are the embodiment of creativity and symbolize female energy. I keep seeing male hobos, so I'm not sure what that means, though they do spin the most beautiful funnel webs. Females do, anyway. Males apparently spend a lot of time searching for mates rather than spinning webs, but they can still produce silk.

I'm having trouble with my creativity so if they're trying to inspire me, it isn't working. And I'm seeing males, not females, so does that mean my creativity needs inspiring or my love life?

Maybe it's just a bad omen. "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," as Shakespeare said.

Or they know it's the 60th anniversary of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White, and they just want to help celebrate.

Or they're here to celebrate Halloween early.

Chances are they are just freezing their little spider butts off because the colder weather has set in and they are seeking warmth. Why warmth has to be in my house is beyond me, but spiders aren't stupid.

There sure are a lot of them lately. If they are symbolizing something, I wonder if I'll ever find out what exactly?

Enjoying one of the last nice days before winter. 

The Halloween display