Ironically enough, I just took down all the cobwebs on my porch so I could hang cobwebs on my porch. It must be halloween.
The sheer number of arachnids that went scurrying away or parachuting down when I came in with my broom was enough to give even me a mild case of the willies, and I’m not much bothered my spiders. I generally hold a “live and let live” policy with my my eight-legged friends. It goes hand and hand with the “screw biodiversity, I wish you didn’t exist” policy I have with mosquitos and flies. The spiders are welcome to co-habitate here so long as they keep up their end of the bargain controlling the insect population, and so long as they acknowledge the fact that if they touch me or my baby, they die.
However, I wished to decorate my porch for Halloween, which necessitated the changing of the light bulb in the light fixture on the ceiling of the patio, and there were a few dozen too many daddy-longlegs in that small space for me to comfortably reach my hand up in there. And while I was at it, I decided I may as well clean out the derelict webs left behind by the garden, wolf, and ever popular jumping spiders as well. I tried to avoid as many of the critters themselves as I could. They can rebuild, but until they start helping out with the mortgage around here, I reserve the right to clean house occasionally.
The past few years, I’ve done a spider theme on my porch anyway. (When in Rome, you know?) But why pick on the phobias of the same one or two friends every year. That hardly seems fair. Share the love. This year I went with birds – crows, to be exact, in keeping with my recently found fascination with the species. It’s a modest decorating scheme for me, compared to years past. Modest, but respectable. I’ll post a few pictures as soon as I can.
I hope Halloween makes it to your various doorsteps in new and interesting ways, folks. Happy hauntings.