Comstock Chronicles

garden spiders

Photo by Ed van duijn on Unsplash

‘Tis the season of walking outside and looking around to find where the resident garden spider is before traversing the backyard. I don’t feel entirely safe until I see where the arachnid has set up shop for the day. If I don’t see it, there’s no knowing if I might walk right into the said shop and do the spider dance.

Two garden spiders built their webs in our courtyard above where the cars park. One built its web between the wires and the carport gate. The other between the wires and the apartment railing. The one on the carport gate had to have a few gos at it before realizing that the bottom anchor of its web had to pivot several times a day as we opened and closed the gate.

A few days ago, the children found the railing spider atop the barbecue cover. They expostulated and grimaced and terrorized the thing until it disappeared. Later, as I spread a clean bedsheet across my five-year-old’s bed, I found the spider. It was creepy-crawling inches from my hand as I smoothed the sheets down. Needless to say I received a shock, and then quickly gathered up the sheet to transport the spider back outside. If my daughter discovered I’d let a spider loose in her room, she’d refuse to sleep there.

I learned something about garden spiders. They won’t crawl onto paper or books. They like fabric more. They also seek the highest point. So the spider kept traveling up towards my hands as I was carrying the sheet out to our breakfast porch. Lastly, spiders don’t like to get off. I ended up flicking the thing off the sheet only to realize that I’d relocated it to a rather enclosed area where now every morning upon exiting onto the breakfast porch to let the cat out of the garage, I must wonder where it’s gone and where it’s built its new nest.

This morning I found its new location above the old chicken hutch. For today, we’re safe.