Still recovering from a spider bite four weeks ago, I had another encounter with a little black spider...!

Date:   6/19/2008 2:42:29 PM ( 16 y ago)

I like spiders! I usually catch the Daddy-Long-Legs in my house by hand and put them outside. I let the ones in the bathroom stay, though, 'cause they eat the ants that always get in through the bathroom window every summer--they come in looking for water.

The brown spiders that make their way into the house, I pick up with a cup and put outside. I don't remember ever seeing a Black Widow, although a nice young man who came to the door yesterday offering to spray the outside of my house for ants and spiders assured me they were around this neighborhood (I firmly but politely declined his offer and told him a long spiel about why insecticides are bad for the environment and for people).

I'm not sure what kind of spider bit me four weeks ago now, as I didn't see it--my hand was in the ivy at the time--it may have been a Black Widow, though, seeing as how my hand swelled up like it did. I read that a Widow's bite is more poisonous than a rattle snake, but because the spider is so small, you get just a teeny tiny bit of venom. Most people who get bitten by a Widow survive after being sick for awhile. Widows are shy and only bite if threatened--they are really small spiders. I guess what looks like a big GIANT HAND coming at them through the ivy is threatening enough--ouch!

I did have a VERY BIG SCARE last week, though. My son was helping me with the yardwork to cut our bamboo--it grows crazy every Spring--anyway, I went outside to find a pair of work gloves for him, as I didn't want him to itch (he has contact skin allegies) or get bitten like I did. Well, I grabbed a pair of old gloves that had been sitting outside on a work bench for a VERY long time, and carried the gloves into the house, holding them in the hand that already had a bite on it. YIKES!! A small black spider popped out of one glove and started crawling around on the top of it, while I was still holding the glove!

I shrieked a scream of pure terror like I'd never done in my life, and dropped the glove on the floor! Standing dumbly looking at it as the little black spider scurried rapidly away, I couldn't tell if it was a Black Widow or not. My brain was numb and I couldn't speak. My son was standing right there; he too, looked at the spider and then with one MASSIVE HUMAN SHOED FOOT, squished it!

Aww!! My son was trying to protect me, as any good son should do, but I felt instantly bad for the spider. If I'd had any presense of mind, I'd have gotten a cup and caught it, putting it outside. My philosophy is: if the insect (or arachnid, in this case) is outside, then that's its domain and it should be allowed to live. The spider was in the house only because I'd brought it in by accident.

My son looked in the work gloves and saw two little spider "nests" in one of them, probably full of spider baby eggs. Apparently the spider had been living in the glove for a long time--I had to clean out the inside of the glove.

I felt bad about the squished spider for hours, as well as the dead babies (yeah, I know, I do tend to obsess!), so early evening I went outside and lit sage over the place where the gloves had lain on the work bench--there was a thick spider web there I had to clean up that I hadn't originally seen in my rush to pick up the gloves--and said a prayer to Spider Woman (no, not the Marvel Comics one, but Grandmother Spider, the Weaver of the World) and asked Her forgiveness for the killing of her daughter and the spider babies.

Back in the house, I got out a tea light candle, put it into my favorite candle holder--a little ceramic skeleton man that I received as a gift last October for Day of the Dead (the traditional holiday Mexicans celebrate instead of Halloween), annointed Skeleton Man's head with pure vanilla extract and cinnamon to make him smell good, and lit the candle in honor of Spider Woman, Weaver of life, and her spider children everywhere!

Related Spider Stories:


Spider Bite!!
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1193647


Spider Totem
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1193658


Spider Journal
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1193670


Spider Woman:
http://www.crystalinks.com/spiderwoman.html
"Spider Woman is a metaphor for she who creates from a central source."

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