Then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn’t no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn’t make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that’s on its mind and can’t make itself understood, and so can’t rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn’t need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn’t no confidence. You do that when you’ve lost a horseshoe that you’ve found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn’t ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you’d killed a spider.
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn’t know.
Chapter One, Huckelberry Finn, Mark Twain.
I loved this book as a child. And this particular passage scarred me for life. I HATE killing spiders. Freaks me out. Makes me shake. I’ve come to terms with black cats, friday the 13ths (even when strange island appear), broken mirrors. Most because I can’t come up with a good reason why those things should freak me out other than that I’ve been taught that they should.
But spiders serve another more important purpose in my life in the subtropical clime that I live in. Spiders eat bugs. I don’t like bugs. The more spiders, the less bugs. But I run into a lot of spiders in my back yard. A lot of bugs actually. The orkin man came the other day and now I have dead bugs everywhere. Ew.
Regardless, this morning I was walking Briscoe and I almost ran slap into a huge spider web. With a nice sized spider hanging out, spinning the web. This little spider looked like a crab. I mean, like a spider that was carrying a crab around on it’s back. Like a little horseshoe crab. He was actually pretty cute, although I wouldn’t want him crawling on me. So I looked it up this morning and I believe it is called a Spinybacked Orbweaver.
Here are some links to pictures of this strange looking little spider.
Tell me what y’all think. What do you do when you kill a spider?
p.s. one time travers killed a spider in his bathroom and million little baby spiders came out of the big spider. AAAGGGGGHHHHHH. I would die. Black out, right there.
the thin line between optimism and delusion... 