Spider

Surprise!

What do you do when you encounter a spider in a place that's yours? Do you kill it? Do you move it? Do you let it be?

Today, I found a spider on my garage keypad. I usually go out the front door for my walks, but because I have unidentified bees nesting under my storm door (and I am severely allergic), I decided to go through the garage. When I came back from a quick walk after work before a 6:00 videoconference, I lifted the plastic flap and found a tiny spider right smack in the middle. This is a pretty common occurrence on this keypad, but normally, when I open the flap, they fall off or find a small crevice in which to hide. This one stayed right there. Tap-tap. Nope, not budging. Tap-tap, again. Nada. I finally got a small twig for it to climb on, which it happily did, and I rested it gently in the greenery next to the garage. Ah, Cheryl. I guess she wanted to say hello today.

Cheryl and I at the end-of-the-year butterfly social,
November 2016

My friend Cheryl passed away on August 23, after a long illness. I met her in 2016, on butterfly surveys in the nearby national park. In the three short years we had together, she taught me much about butterflies and the natural world. She was completely self-taught and had the most amazing eye for detail. As her husband wrote in her obituary, "She loved all of God's creatures, whether they crept, crawled, slithered, walked, or flew—and she photographed them all." Cheryl's first love were spiders. As a kid, she told me how obsessed she was with them, drawing pictures of them and I think even collecting them. My entry into the insect world was pretty butterflies; hers was spiders.

My position on spiders has evolved quite a bit since I was a kid when I would ask my dad to kill them, or worse yet, I would murder them with the vacuum cleaner. I used to be afraid of these eight-legged creatures because I was ignorant and disconnected from nature. Now because of Cheryl and another friend who used to rescue spiders from our workplace, I am happy to either leave them be (unless they are over my bed) or take them outside to their natural environs. Please don't ask me what happens when they are over my bed.

Today's grace was that itsy-bitsy spider, a little hello from dearly departed friend whose love lives on in my heart—and in arachnids.