Father, Son, and Holy Spider

I swear, spiders are after me. They've heard of my eternal vendetta against them and have massed armies of minions to stalk me for all of eternity.  And maybe God's mad at me too, since spiders are His creation--though I sometimes question the motivations of making something so terrifying.

And maybe it was just a coincidence that I was accosted in church last Wednesday by an eight-legged fiend.  But I doubt it.

I thought that maybe I had made my peace with spiders, but this latest assault proves otherwise.  I guess one grudging friendship isn't enough to wipe clean a lifetime of squished arachnids.

Last Wednesday there was a worker from a local crisis pregnancy clinic speaking at a church nearby.  My family went, but I had decided not to go because the weather was stormy. Due to unforeseeable events, my mother--who is a diabetic--forgot to bring her insulin with her to the big meal of Brunswick stew the church provided beforehand.  And I was the only one still at home.

So, naturally, I braved the wind and the rain on my desperate quest to bring the insulin to my mom.

I was then roped into attending the service by food-related bribery. Delicious hot soup is irresistible to a cold, rain-soaked traveler, and it's just not cool to eat and run.  So I sat and listened with polite interest as the lady told the story of how her clinic was changing lives for the better.

Suddenly, my mom pointed at the back of the pew in front of us.  And that's when I saw it. 

It was a brown eight-legged demon, crawling towards me at a breakneck pace. I immediately gasped and slid about four feet down the pew.  It was all I could do not to run shrieking from the church.

 My dad whispered to just let it run on by, but I stared at him in disbelief. Sure, let the big, gigantic (about two inches, counting the legs) spider just waltz on by.  I'm sure he only wants to tell me how glad he was that I came to the Wednesday night service.

I mean, seriously?  It's a spider.  Like all it's brethren, it wants to do horrid, unspeakable things to me.  It knows of my vendetta, and it will be well compensated for my demise.

Luckily, my mother said no.  She handed dad one of her shoes, and he promptly squashed the ugly brute.

If that spider had come even another inch closer, I was going to have run from that church while screaming bloody murder and all the gossips in the county would have had something more interesting to talk about than the hyperactive lady from the crisis pregnancy center.

 I'm relatively sure the gossips would have decided I was possessed and I would have wound up on all the prayer chains in the state, all because a spider decided it wanted to attend church.

The Pumphouse Spider

I sometimes like to run in the woods behind our house.  There's a nice dirt road back there that the paving company next door made so they could have room to store spare dirt and gravel.  I'm not trespassing, though. My great-uncle owns the company, and he lets his family roam all over his land.  I've gotten lost in those woods more times than I care to remember, with all sorts of people. 

But lately I haven't been getting myself lost.  I've stuck to the well-defined paths instead, in an attempt to reclaim some fitness into my life.  And for a few weeks I had myself a friend and cheerleader who never discouraged me and who was always waiting for me to return home.

I noticed a garden spider hanging out on the pumphouse one day as I was setting out.  I loathe spiders.  They terrify me.  There is nothing on earth more frightening than a spider, at least to me.  No matter how big or small they are, I am sure they have evil intentions and are out to murder me brutally in my sleep. Apparently, I am not the only one who feels this way. 

But for whatever reason, I took pity on the spider that day.  Maybe because it's pathetic little web was only a foot off the ground, or because the cold wind was tossing it back and forth.  Or maybe because it was so freaking huge that I was too afraid of it to try to kill it.  I don't know.  

What I do know is that it became my silent, mostly unmoving running partner. 

I found myself looking for my spider companion every day, just to see if it was still there.  This may be because I was nervous about letting it live, and wanted to be sure it hadn't left it's spot, for fear that it would come after me inside the house. 

But each time I set out for a run, and each time I came back, I always checked for the spider. 

After a few days we started playing games together.  I would drop a small leaf on it's web and it would chase it.  I called it "Spider Fetch," but I'm not sure the spider liked being tricked like that.  I'm sure it expected a big juicy bug.  But you know what?  If spiders became vegetarians, I might like them more.  I'm sure they could learn to enjoy a nice green leafy diet if they really tried. 

I haven't seen the spider since the great pumphouse wreck of '11.  Believe me, I've looked.  I'm certain it holds a grudge about the incident.  The only question is where it has relocated to...and if it will visit us indoors before it gets too cold for it to live.