On crickets and spiders ....

This weekend someone at church happened to mention he'd heard that crickets and spiders usually first appear at the same time during the summer. I'd never heard this; it sounded like a old wives' tale to me.

Last night, sitting on my porch, listening to a medley of cricket-songs, I recalled what he had said. And, yes, at the far end of the porch, there she was: the orb-weaver, or her descendant, swinging gently in the light breeze, backlit by my neighbor's garage light.

Well! this is a nasty development! The hair on my arms stood straight up. Her body is at least an inch across. Her legs are red-striped. YUCK.

I know, I know -- she's part of God's creation. But so is toothache, and I don't have to like that, either!

She'll be fine as long as she stays at the other end of the porch. I'll try to appreciate her. I'll try to list 5 reasons for liking her ....

You go first.

Comments

Jan said…
FIVE reasons seems a little excessive. . . .Here's one: Inspiration for the book "Charlotte's Web."
3:29 PM
Fran said…
Hah! Keep your distance for peace!
9:17 PM
Anonymous said…
Ew, sorry, can't help you there. My husband would say something about her amazing engineering ability, and her work at keeping away pests by eating them.

I would just say EEEEWWWW!

-the seminarian
2:54 PM
sharecropper said…
We have had several wonderful writing spiders - like Charlotte - at our house in past years. We did some renovation this past winter and all the egg sacs were destroyed. I do hope other writing spiders find us. I miss them. They choose places in corners and over doorway edges and stretch their wonderful delicate webs across the space.

They catch lots of bugs that would bite me.

They scurry away when I touch their web, maybe disliking me a bit.

They add character to an otherwise mundane existence - like the lizards that live here.

Hmmm. I wonder if lizards eat spiders?
7:18 PM
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