Come into my parlor

Brian Wilson

I have made peace with the spider that lives in my shower.

Please don’t ask me if it is a boy spider or a girl spider. I frankly have no desire to capture it and check. I shudder to think what sort of weird list I would end up on if my browser history was filled with searches about how to determine the sex of a spider and what sorts of annoying targeted marketing ads would invade my social media feeds.

I have taken to calling the spider “Sid” when I have my rather one-sided conversations with it while showering. Sid is a good listener but not much of a conversationalist, which is fine. I am not sure I would share many common interests with Sid nor am I emotionally ready to deal with a talking spider.

In full confession mode, I feel it important to clarify that I am not a fan of spiders. Not that any spider has particularly harmed me or someone I am close to, it is just a fundamental and unreasoning dislike for things with more than four legs which have pincers and poison.

For example, if a big hairy spider was walking down the sidewalk toward me, I might just decide to cut across the street to avoid it.

There are certain types of spiders, namely the ones that would inflict painful and potentially lethal bites, that I will avoid to the point of never going to the states or continents where they are located.

There is a time in my life that I would have seriously considered burning a building to the ground and burying the rubble in a deep pit as a method of getting rid of creepy crawling spiders.

My unreasoning dislike of spiders mellowed somewhat when I discovered that we share a common enemy in centipedes. Centipedes take top billing for me among creepy crawling creatures that I would relocate to the Antarctic to avoid.

My views on spiders has continued to mellow. I recognize they have a place in the world, and as long as they stay in their place and don’t invade mine I am fine.

This brings us to Sid and the other house spiders who are squatters in my home. Like many people this year, we have been dealing with fruit flies which came in with potted plants and on the skins of fresh fruits and vegetables, not to mention the goo-like substances that used to be potatoes in my potato pantry. It is better to blot that sight, and smell from memory.

Sid finds fruit flies to be yummy snacks and enjoys the annoying houseflies that snuck in even more.

If anyone has attempted to shower with a fly buzzing around, you can attest to the extreme measures you are willing to take in order to eradicate it.

This brings us to the peace treaty I have with Sid and its brethren. As long as they do their job keeping pests from annoying me, I am willing to allow them to creep around in the ceiling corners and elsewhere where my chances of direct contact with them diminishes.

Since I sleep with a full mask for my CPAP machine, which keeps me from stopping breathing in the middle of the night, even the fear of potentially swallowing curious spiders in my sleep is greatly diminished. However, my wife and children are on their own in that regard.

Likewise, I am not overly concerned with Sid’s voyeuristic tendencies while chilling out in the humid corner of my shower stall and keeping its beady little eyes pealed for its next meal. I can’t imagine that watching an overweight bearded guy groggily staring blankly into a shower spray is an appealing sight for anyone, let alone a blood sucking eight-legged fiend.

Sid serves a purpose in the niche ecosystem that I call my home and as long he minds his business and stays in his own areas and not harassing me I won’t go out of my way to harass him.

While the two of us will likely never be friends, our differences are just too great for that, I recognize that Sid has his role in this world too.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.