To Battle Spiders

The title is not a metaphor. There is no metaphor for the spider, no wonderful and beautifully written allegory about such creature. No. I want to tell you about the spiders I’ve been fighting with in our screened in pool area. There is no poetry, only savagery. There is no artistry, only tragedy.

A few weeks ago my husband had a terrible allergic reaction to a bug bite. The type of reaction that took a doctor’s visit, multiple medicines, and two weeks to get better. He’d been out in the backyard doing work when he first got bit, and though our house is new to us, my husband is not unfamiliar with Florida insects.

My first suspicion: The Spiders

When I was little, in our house with the pool, we had a small infestation of Spiny-Orb Weaver spiders. They too liked the area at the top of the pool screen like our current ones do. I remember swimming and looking up at a few as they descended to sit on their threads in the cloying heat. I wonder now, that as they hung upside down, the the blue pool water surrounded their gaze and reflected the heavens. I wonder if that is what draws them to pools, then and now.

Sometimes they would fall and die at the bottom of our pool. But a Spiny-Orb Weaver’s back is spiked, and to step on one (which I did all to often as a child) led to a allergy-induced swelling.

There for they were my first suspects.

My other suspects were the larger Golden Silk Orb Spiders (Florida Banana Spider), out in the bush areas, and the, and the larger orb spiders near our pool.

None of these species is venemous in a way that is significant. But I worried that DJ might have some sort of allergy to any of these and I was determined to mitigate the threat before it became consistent.

Bar The Door

So it was right before the oncoming hurricane that I decided is was time to tackle all their intrusion. Armed with an old broom, wasp spray and sneakers, I began my slaughter. The wasp spray proved useless, in particular with a rather large orb that remained out of reach and refused to die. Though my arm and the broom could only go so high, I swatted and removed their nests. Then I beat the broom against the ground and stomped any escapees. I did this for hours, in the pool area and around the garden.

It was striking, how cold I was to it all. I dislike hurting or killing anything, though I can govern the courage to kill an invading insect in my home, it’s not something I don’t muddle over later. I’m the type that every memory I have of saying something mean to someone, of killing or hurting something, even a bug, replays in my memory at a constant. This torture makes me grateful that my illnesses and medications come with memory loss. But there I was, stomping with abandon, slaughtering without feeling.

I want to think I was motivated by chivalry purpose, to save my husband a bite that made me cold to it. But even now, I cannot muster the sort of discomfort I would usually feel. It is the lack of it that is frightening, a marker of change. And perhaps this is better, but I could never really trust anyone muzzled by their own agony, and I wonder what that makes me.