The Spider Laughs

The spider laughs at me. No one hears it but me. No one else is supposed to. It has a deep, throaty, rumbling laugh similar to the way villains laugh just before they blow up orphanages and embezzle money from the elderly. Only the spider laughs quieter. Real soft. No one hears it but me and I won't tell anyone because they won't believe me. The spider laughs because it knows. It knows that I am afraid of it. Not afraid that it will bite me and kill me with its poison, because I know it is not venomous. Nor am I afraid that it will jump onto my face and suck all of the juice from my eyeballs leaving them to rattle in my head like shriveled, dried apricots. I am just afraid that it will get on me. That is enough. The mere thought that a spider might get on me sends me into paroxysms of fear. I am convinced that if a spider ever does get on me I will go insane in that instant. The very moment of a spider's touch will transform me from a walking, talking, productive member of society to a quivering, slobbering mass of misfiring neurons that has to be intravenously fed and have it's diapers changed. I know this to be true, deep down in the very core of my soul. The spider knows it too. That is why it laughs.

I have a Spider Dance. Everyone knows this Dance. It has many different names: The Lizard Dance, The Mouse Dance, The Bat Dance, and the increasingly popular I Think it's a Killer Bee Dance. They are all the same - a frenzied, total blind panic, running frantically, slapping yourself silly Dance to get it OFF. I can be sent into my Spider Dance merely by seeing a web within my comfort zone (A twenty-foot invisible sphere emanating from my right ventricle.). Touching a web neutralizes my nervous system and I pass out. As a child, I fell flat out of a tree because I touched a web. I felt it brush my arm and I simply let go of the branch supporting me. I fell nearly 10 feet down to the grass below. I woke up I don't know how many minutes later with my dog licking my face and I flew into my Spider Dance, running across the yard slapping myself followed by my barking dog. You see, the Spider Dance can be delayed but not prevented.

It is unfortunate that I live in Florida. Florida's soupy, steamy semi-tropical climate sanctions a simmering cauldron of pseudo-primordial stew and the entire state is consequently crawling with detestable organisms such as alligators and snakes and poisonous toads that sing all night long. There are trees that strangle one another, plants that eat bugs, and mite-infested Spanish moss dripping from every Oak. At the beaches there are sharks and crabs and stinging jellyfish and who knows what is living in those clumps of seaweed floating out there. And everywhere, I mean everywhere - sometimes even creeping out of the overflow drain when you are taking a bath, are roaches as big as my big toe that can, and do, FLY - usually right toward your face. But what bothers me most are the spiders. Not tiny little dime-sized spiders found in normal parts of the world. I am talking about SPIDERS - industrial strength, chemical-resistant spiders with bodies the size of Vienna sausages, legs 3 inches long and web silk like sewing thread. Sigourney Weaver would hesitate to approach one of these things. We locals call them Banana Spiders. Officially, they are called Golden Orb Spiders. They emigrated here in the '70s from Central and South America aboard cargo ships carrying exotic fruit as many of our human residents did. They are not poisonous, or that is the theory anyway. I don't believe anyone could have ever voluntarily gotten close enough to one to really find out.

Early on, right after the tree incident, I developed a web detector for my protection. I can now spot a web at 50 paces. I can even spot them in trees along the highway from a moving vehicle going 65 miles an hour. I constantly scan for them. It is not conscious - it is just another part of my life-support system like breathing and pumping blood. I just do it. I see a web - my Spider Proximity Alert goes off and I instantly become watchful and wary. It's easy with web spiders. At least they have the integrity to stay put. The evil, fat, hairy, brown spiders are more insidious. You never know where they are. No shimmer of light glinting off of a drop of dew on a gossamer thread to give them away - they just appear. You'll find them in the corner of your living room, under the couch, on the inside of your car's windshield, in your shoe, on the pillow next to your head - they live anywhere. You have to be very close before you see them. They want it that way. It is easier for them to get on you. I don't like to think about those kinds of spiders.

There is a web spider in the corner of my front porch where I am sitting right now. The laughing spider is in it. It knows I am writing about it. It wants me to come closer so it can read my notebook. I won't do it. I keep my left arm over the page so it can't see. It moves back and forth in its web trying for a better view. I check every few minutes to keep tabs on it. It is 10 feet in the air on a wall 22 feet away from me. Just outside my Spider Proximity Limit. It has lived there for two weeks because spider insecticide only sprays 15 feet.

I watch it carefully when I enter and exit the house and clutch my purse tightly shut so it can't jump in it. I know that is what it wants to do.

I keep an eye on it.

The spider laughs at me. It laughs because it knows.