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A Modern Fairy Tale - Part II

A Modern Fairy Tale – Part II

Note: Some of the names have been changed to protect identities.

As I descended the steps of the Greyhound on that hot July day in 1981, my eyes meeting Kim’s, the butterflies swarming in my stomach were the size of Mothra from the Godzilla movie. My heartbeat was pulsating in my ears and my entire face felt like it was in flame. I felt like the schoolgirl finally being asked to go steady from…

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A Modern Fairy Tale - Part II

I had never had this feeling before, and I could imagine a life of bliss at the bottom of those stairs. As I took the last step from the bus onto the pavement, my legs felt like elastic strips and my head was swimming and all of a sudden, I was scared. What if this was a mistake? I had just spent the last 40 hours on a bus to embark on a life with someone I really knew very little about, but here I stood and the only thing I could do now was put one foot in front of the other.

Joei, who had taken to Kim immediately over the summer, yelled his name and jumped off the last step and plowed into his legs with a big bear hug. Kim scooped him up in his arms and gave him quick little kisses all over his face.

Here was a twenty-two-year-old guy who accepted Joei as his own. This wasn’t an act, as I had carefully watched the interaction between the two during the early part of the summer. Kim’s feelings were genuine, and he had an air to him that few people have. The kind of individual that seems to have a spotlight on them when they walk into a room, and everyone wants to be around. He was just magnetic.

He embraced me with the same gusto he had shown Jo, and his embrace was tight, enveloping and warm. I felt shielded and safe from my teen years that had been filled with so much pain and desperation.

In late August, Joei’s dad wanted him to live with him on the other side of the state, explaining to me the emptiness he felt without his boy, that the daycare and pre-schools in his area were top-notch and, his folks sorely missed their grandson. I agreed, and we settled on a visitation plan. The gap of his absence left a bit of awkwardness as it does when a child has been the center of conversation and observation between two people. It was as if we were experiencing empty nest syndrome at such an early age.

To our surprise, there was no awkwardness after he left. With Jo now living with his dad, we began to learn more about one another, and there was an uncanny ease to doing so. It was comfortable, effortless and familiar. We shifted into enjoying what was left of summer, which was full of laughs, loves and wonders. Every day seemed like a vacation and the mundane wasn’t ordinary at all. This was the first time in my memory that I looked forward to getting out of bed each morning.

One afternoon, as Kim and I were standing behind our humble little shack, or, if we want to be real here, migrant housing, that sat on several acres of apple orchards his mother Dot owned. We were looking at the flower bed below the kitchen window and talking about how well the flowers had grown over the summer. I looked up to the eves and the pitch of the roof and then slowly turned my face toward Kim’s. I was hit with the strongest case of Déjà Vu I had ever experienced, and it must have shown on my face. I explained to Kim that several years prior I had dreamt of this very scenario, except I couldn’t identify the man in my dream. “It was you” I said. “This whole thing, looking at the flowers and up at the roof, it was with you”. He then told me that the next time we went to his mom’s house, that she had a story that would knock my socks off, and boy, did it ever.

As Dot sat in her stool at the kitchen counter, she recounted a story when Kim was six years old. She was outside hanging laundry on the clothesline and Kim was playing in the yard. Suddenly, a face, plain as day, came across her field of vision. It frightened her so badly that she left the laundry in the basket, scooped up Kim and ran in the house. Her eyes met mine and she uttered “It was your face I saw that day”.

A million tiny needles filled my arms and legs, and my heart jumped into my throat. Dot’s story on top of my dream was a bit too eerie, even for me, but at the same time, confirmed what I had felt deep in my heart about this man. He was my soulmate.

Our days were filled with barbecues and horseshoes with plenty of friends. Evenings were occasionally spent at parties listening as friends played guitars and harmonicas while everyone huddled next to bonfires. Laughter and talk were abundant.

That year, Kim taught me how to play cribbage and pinochle, and many hours were spent at the kitchen table, just he and I, playing cards with good tunes wafting from the stereo. It was the best times of our lives, and the love that was building inside of me was growing exponentially by the day. I had never felt real love before, and it was amazing, but at the same time completely unsettling. I could feel the safety net surrounding the walls that guarded my heart begin to fall away, and that left me feeling vulnerable. Because of my childhood and teen years, I had built quite a wall around myself, and a part of me was very nervous to let it fall.

We married in November of 1981, at Dot’s home with just a few family members and friends. After the ceremony, we arrived home to a party that was well underway. Before we even pulled into the driveway, we could hear bass thumping from the stereo, and as soon as we walked through the door, cigarette and pot smoke was as thick as fog with everyone shouting and laughing over the tunes. There were a lot of bets taken that night about how long this marriage would last. I think the longest bet was two years, and Kim and I have had a good laugh many times over the years, wishing we could find everyone that placed those bets, because we would own an eighty-foot yacht on the Mediterranean by now.

Our first child came to us in October of 1982, a son, who I wanted to name after Kim. He put his foot down explaining to me that having a name like that in school brought out the bullies, so we chose Nathan. It seemed to fit our little guy to a T. When Nathan was six months old, I had a flashback of a dream I had when I was newly pregnant. The little six-month old tot I was on the floor playing with, was the same child in my dream. Same round face and deep brown eyes. So, that made three. Three eerie predictions in the lives of two people.

The 80’s were a crazy time. Music was blossoming into several genres not heard before, drugs were prevalent, and it seemed like the entire area was a party zone. Kim and I adopted the belief that if we were to die tomorrow, we were going to get as much living as we could fit in, today. It proved to be a most destructive path.

Cocaine was plentiful in the 1980’s, and it seemed everyone in the valley was using it and we were no exception. We had become best friends with another couple, Jay and Dani, who had a daughter Nathan’s age, and the four of us would stay up sometimes two or three days straight, playing cards, snorting coke and taking turns watching the kiddies.

In 1984, I became pregnant again and all partying came to a halt. Dot proposed that we purchase the tract of orchard we were living on, along with another plot of acreage. Kim had been managing both orchards for the last few years and an agreement was made. One of the stipulations from our loan company, FHA, was the shack would have to go. It was to be replaced with either a home or double-wide mobile home. Kim and I were both excited but saddened by this. This little shack was home. It was comfort.

By March of 1984, our humble little home had been torn down and replaced by a brand new double wide. It looked as though a new life was unrolling right in front of us. In June, we welcomed our daughter Erin into the world, and she rounded out our little family perfectly. Nathan absolutely doted on his little sister, playing with her constantly and acting every bit the big brother. Even when I was pregnant, he would giggle wildly when he felt her move in my tummy. I knew they weren’t just going to be siblings; they were going to be best friends. We now owned a home and apple orchards and had two beautiful children. It was idyllic.

In August of that year, despite how well everything was going, we jumped back into the party scene. We were selling massive amounts of cocaine, staying up for 24 hours several times a week and receiving red-carpet treatment at many bars and restaurants, due to the owners being customers of ours. It seemed the kids spent more time with Jay and Dani than they did with us, but we were completely snow blinded.

I remember one night, there was an altercation at the house when an acquaintance of ours, Vicki, showed us a .38 pistol she had just bought. We were in the back office and Kim excused himself to go to the bathroom, which adjoined the office.

Vicki raised the gun and pointed it towards the bathroom and to my shock, pulled the trigger. I couldn’t believe she would bring a loaded gun into the house. At the same time the gun went off, Kim ran out of the bathroom, his eyes as wide as dinner plates and before we could yell at her for being such an idiot, Vicki ran out of the house double time in complete embarrassment. We never saw her again.

Oddly, the sound of the gun didn’t wake the kids, and Kim and I walked into the bathroom to access the damage. The bullet had gone through the wall, chest level, exactly where Kim would have been standing just seconds before. It went through the opposite wall into the living room and lodged in the stove pipe of our wood stove.

I’d like to add here that Kim was born almost three months premature. At the time, they gave Dot a fifty percent survival rate and Kim, zero. In his teens, he jumped off a twenty-foot high wall of an area they don’t allow diving any longer for obvious reasons and hit a boulder straight on with his head. There was also the time in his late teens, while getting quite inebriated in a local tavern, a Marine punched him in the face throwing him headlong into a pool table, which he moved two or three inches. This was either the luckiest guy on the planet or he had reinforced steel for a skull and an army of Guardian Angels by his side 24/7.

One night in the autumn of 1987, after we had already been up for 24 hours and were working on the second 24, we were out on our deck. We both spotted what looked like the glow from a cigarette in the orchard. Kim and I ran down the deck steps into the pitch-black and as we were running like madmen through the rows, we thought we heard someone running several yards in front of us. After about ten minutes, we gave up, panting and out of breath and went back to the house. I can’t speak for Kim, but I felt like I was just way too high and the whole thing was a figment of my imagination, and I felt embarrassed because I’d gotten so out of control. If someone would have looked in our eyes that night, they’d have tossed us in the loonie bin.

The next morning, I wanted to look in the orchard in the light of day, to see if someone really had been out there. As I neared the area, I spotted a piece of paper on the ground that turned out to be a receipt from one of the local stores dated for the previous day. I also saw three perfect circles evenly spaced in the dirt near the receipt. As I studied it, it came to me that it was the footprint of a camera tripod. I ran as fast as my feet could carry me and bounded up the stairs of the deck and blew into the house to tell Kim. My heart was pounding wildly in my ears and I was sure it was going to blow right through my chest.

In the backs of our minds, we knew that by selling coke, we could become a target with the Sheriff’s department. But, as it happens when you’re young, you don’t really think anything bad will happen to you and unfortunately, when you’re using drugs, you just don’t care. Seeing those tripod marks gave us a glimpse of reality, albeit hazy. It is extremely difficult to sort out reality and paranoia when drugs are involved. You try to shake the cobwebs loose, but you still tell yourself it’s not really real, that there just has to be some other explanation. Anything but the stark-naked truth of it.

There had been rumors floating around town for several months about upcoming drug busts. There were a lot of paranoid people out there and they would be more than happy to bend your ear if you’d let them. There hadn’t been any arrests, and other than seeing the receipt and tripod marks, we wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

Using illegal substances is a funny business. You know the difference between right and wrong but when you are in the throes of getting high, you seem to toss your moral compass right out the window and damn the consequences.

I remember at one point; we owed our dealer roughly a thousand dollars. My wedding ring had been custom made by a local jeweler, using a diamond from my grandmother’s engagement ring, and I offered it to Jose to hold until we could pay him. We were now using up our profits and it was unlikely I would ever see my ring again.

On an early autumn morning in 1987, a gentleman who introduced himself as Arnie, along with his Golden Retriever Red, arrived at the house. He explained he was working with the local sheriff’s department, heading up a drug task force. We learned that we had been on the watch list for quite some time, and we were currently second on that list for arrest. We also learned that Red wasn’t your garden variety Retriever. He was a drug sniffing canine. Arnie explained that our arrests could mean twenty years in prison for each of us, and most likely foster care for the kids if a family member was unable to care for them. When we mentioned the receipt and marks in the orchard, he verified they were indeed real, that we had been under surveillance for several weeks and plenty of photos had been taken.

To this day, I’m still unsure why he gave us forewarning, but he told us that he was there as a courtesy because he said, “You two have a family and seem like good folks who got caught up in a bad situation”. He was giving us the chance to get our shit together and keep our family intact.

Kim and I took to Arnie right away and we met again several times. There was something likable about him. He was one of those warm individuals that you just felt comfortable around and trusted instinctively. We told him we planned to get sober and put our lives back on track once again and put all the nonsense behind us. Arnie let us know that time was of the essence and we needed to take care of things right away because drug raids were in the starting gates and once that bell rung, it would be too late. We had already tried two treatment programs to sober up, but it didn’t take long to get right back into the life again once we got out. This time, we just absolutely had to make it work. This was as serious as it got.

During that time, we also received a visit from a woman from the Department of Social and Health Services, who told us that the kids were in danger of being placed in foster care due to our drug use. She knew Arnie, and together they were doing their best to give us the benefit of the doubt. She told us if a family member wanted to, they could apply for a foster care license to avoid our babies going into the court system. Kim’s sister Trudi and her husband Ron did just that. They applied for an emergency foster license and Nate and Erin were placed with them. It was a horrible situation we were in, but the only positive in it was that the kids would be with family in a warm, loving and stable environment during the time it took Kim and I to get our act together.

Because we had been so detached from reality, loan payments on the orchards hadn’t been made in close to a year. Shortly after our initial visits with Arnie and DSHS, the bank took the orchards back. Our mobile home, household items, vehicles and our boat were sold with the proceeds being applied toward the loan. It barely made a dent. Once on top of the world, we’d now been stripped of everything. It’s just you and me against the world Honey.

We loaded our last remaining car, a 1968 Mercury Cougar, with some blankets and a few clothes and stayed with a friend in Chelan for a couple of weeks. We spent those two weeks doing the Pity Party Last Waltz. I think we partied harder in that two weeks than we possibly had in the last three years. We were doing our best not to remember how badly we fucked up. The arrangement with DSHS dictated that we were not allowed to see the kids until we could prove we were off the drugs and could provide a stable home environment. In my opinion, there is no experience worse than losing your children. Material things come and go and don’t mean a thing in the grand scheme, but losing your babies is agonizing.

When we were good and done with our pity party, we began the long walk back to civilization and normalcy. Dot provided us with a single wide trailer in a local trailer park. We moved in and began new jobs on a road construction crew across the lake. We had no furniture of any kind any longer, so we hit yard sales and second-hand stores when we could afford it, and Dot helped a tremendous amount. After two months, we got Nate and Erin back, and it just can’t be expressed enough, the heavy heart that lifted the first time we were able to visit them. Having them back in our fold was euphoric. This was the first time we had truly been sober in over four years and it felt wonderful. The only black spot was realizing what we’d lost. Not so much in terms of stuff but Kim’s family orchards. His dad died in the spring of 1977 and I know losing those orchards hit Kim particularly hard. I believe he felt he let his father down.

One afternoon there was a knock on our door and when I looked outside, I saw it was our old drug dealer Jose. Kim and I let him and his wife in, and as we talked and explained to him that we were out of the life, I noticed my ring on his pinky finger. I felt a hole open up in my stomach. I couldn’t take my eyes off it and I wanted to say something in the worst way but, what could I say? We still owed him over a thousand dollars and realistically, I couldn’t see getting him paid any time soon. This wasn’t just a ring, it was the diamond from my grandmothers engagement ring that made it special. It meant everything to me. I guess this was one material piece I didn’t want to see go.

Despite us still owing Jose the money, he and his wife were genuinely happy to hear we were on the up and up, and they shared that they were also out of the life, and after a half an hour or so, they left. As I watched them get into their car, the pang of regret hit hard. It would be the first of many to come. A few minutes later, there was another knock on the door. Jose had returned, and as he came in, he told us again how happy he was for us and slipped the ring off his pinkie and handed it to me. I could feel the sting of tears welling up in my eyes and I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to say anything without completely losing it.

If you’re out there Jose, thank you.

We’ve made roughly fifteen moves in the last 30 years, with the longest stretch living in the Columbia Basin. While visiting very good friends of ours who lived there, we told each other that we would absolutely never live in the area. We were there nearly thirteen years. Go figure.

Ours has been neither a life of ease nor regularity. We have learned to adapt to virtually every kind of situation and have stood by one another through it all, except for the few times I climbed aboard the crazy train and opted to flake out momentarily. Despite that, my husband took me back in his arms and loved me as if nothing happened. For those of you reading this that know Kim, you know the kind of man he is. People are just drawn to him because there is just a genuineness that is rarely seen anymore.

We’ve had money and been so broke that we counted quarters to get milk. We have both been overweight and rail thin, but one thing that has always remained is the love we have for each other. I’ve only been in love with one man so I have no idea about another couple’s relationship mechanics, but I can tell you the number of times that we have had the same thought at the exact same moment, are too numerous to count.

As a footnote, I’d like to add to the “eerie” dreams, premonitions and other weird stuff; In 2007, Erin was playing around on Ancestry.com and found that my great grandfather and Kim’s great grandfather not only served in the service at the same time, but were in the same regiment. Now, for a girl who moved to Washington State from California to meet her husband, who was born and raised in North Central Washington, thinks that’s the cherry on top of this sundae.

38 years ago, as we sat on the porch steps of that little shack, we’d laugh about the thought of the two of us old and gray, sitting in rocking chairs.

Okay Honey, here we sit, and my love for you is a thousand times more now than it was then. Here’s to the next 38.

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luckythecog

Please don't call me the Harvestman

Please don’t call me the Harvestman

My eyes automatically drift to the upper left-hand corner, as they always did when I entered my small but quaint bathroom, with its white painted brick and sage colored cabinets. I notice she’s gone, and I find myself feeling a bit of worry, or, in the least, a small sense of loss. How many times had I entered, gazing at the corner with wonder and admiration at the small miracle of her life?

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luckythecog

Update! Delilah came back yesterday. I’m sure you’re thinking “How do you know it’s not a different spider?” I just do :-)

Sorry for the grainy pic... my cell doesn’t take good photos :-(

#amwriting #writerslife #entomology #spiders

Walking is a great way to get the creative juices flowing. In our home, walking is a family affair which includes Lucky, our “Cog”, who is more dog than cat.

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Some days i find it nearly impossible to tear myself away from my writing to take care of daily tasks and errands. I think maybe it’s time to join W.A (Writers anonymous).

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A Modern Day Fairy Tale - Part I

A Modern Day Fairy Tale – Part I

Is it fate or chance that bring two people together? I didn’t believe in the former until I was nineteen years old, in 1980.

I moved to Washington State from northern California at the age of 16. I lived in Central Oregon for a year and then on to the Olympic Peninsula for two more.

While spending two summer months in the Lake Chelan Valley in 1980, I was at a party that consisted of about…

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How sad is it when you grab your toothbrush and toothpaste to head to the kitchen so you don't disturb the cat in your sink?

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In order to grow, we need to be able to push ourselves beyond our comfort zone. Get out and try new things. If you're uncomfortable around people, try volunteering. Afraid of dogs, volunteer at a local animal shelter. In writing, we should delve into areas other than what we're familiar with. Try new avenues such poetry, science fiction or nonfiction. It's like learning a new language and read, read, read! The more we read, the better writers we become.

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Please don't call me the Harvestman

Please don’t call me the Harvestman

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Please don’t call me the Harvestman

Although I had noticed her absence in the past, she had always returned, but I knew the day would come when I would see her no more. I wasn’t quite ready for that emptiness just yet. She’d be back from the mission she was on. I had come to enjoy the observance with a child’s wonder.

My eyes were now scanning all four corners, low and high, checking behind and over obstacles, but there was no sign of her. Days previous had shown what were perhaps siblings, offspring or possible mates. My knowledge was inadequate, and I found myself following rabbit holes to learn as much as I could about this little creature.

I gave her an endearing name. Delilah. My imagination conjured up a mutual respect between us. She indulged me the space I asked for, and I reciprocated by keeping the broom away from her home so it wouldn’t be damaged.

Was this the beginning of what losing one’s sanity looked like? How many people, if told of this strange relationship, would think I had lost my mind? My compassion meter had always run in the red, and that was how I justified this little bond. It took me three weeks to muster the courage to talk about her to my husband. When I finally did, he gave me the “I love you, despite your being a little over the top sometimes” look. Better than an eye roll, I suppose.

Delilah was a Daddy Long Legs, or Cellar Spider, of the Pholcidae family. Not to be confused with the other Daddy Long Legs, or Harvestmen, of the Opilione family. The difference between the two? Pholcidae have three or four pairs of eyes, no antennae and two body segments, creating an elongating appearance. The Opiliones have only two eyes, one body segment, which is more of a pill shape, and they do not produce silk. The Opilione family are more closely related to scorpions than to spiders.

Delilah wasn’t just a spider but perhaps the largest Daddy Longlegs I had ever seen, and, as she aged, her color advanced from tan to dark brown to finally black, giving the joints in her perfectly formed eight legs, the appearance of beautiful onyx beads. The first time I spotted her in the upper corner of my bathroom, she was yet still relatively small, perhaps 2-3 millimeters and light tan. Shortly before she disappeared, her size had tripled. She had lived in my bathroom for nearly a year.

I have always allowed certain beneficial spiders in my home, as they help to eliminate other pests. It’s an “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” type of relationship, but the majority of insects are scooped up and placed outside. I would not consider myself a spider lover by any stretch but, my respect for all living things runs deep. My blog post titled “Warmth of the Autumn Sun” explains how this came to be.

Every evening, as I showered, Delilah would stretch out her two front legs as far as they could go. Toward the end of her life, those legs proved to be nearly two inches long and were quite impressive. Although I didn’t understand what this behavior meant at the time, she conducted it like clockwork each time the bathroom filled with steam.

One afternoon as I was doing my own cleaning, A new insect from her web dropped to the floor. prior to this, I had watched her feast for days on a single host, and this new meal hadn’t been there a few hours before, so I assumed it fell prematurely.

As crazy as the thought was, I was entertaining the idea of getting it back up into her web somehow. Now, how does one do this without accidentally snagging some delicate piece of the construction, yanking the entire thing to shreds? Good question, but as the planning and execution of Spider-Aid 2019 rolled through my mind, the only solution seemed to just toss it back up into her web.

You may think this would be an easy task. It-is-not. I just thank God no one had been watching me attempt this feat, or it would have kept them laughing for weeks.

The first time I tossed the insect up, it completely missed the web. Although it was a good-sized bug, it didn’t quite have the heft I had hoped for. I stooped down, scooped it off the bathroom floor, and decided to stand on top of the toilet. Being closer should increase my chances of success.

Being ever so careful to avoid snagging part of her web, inviting an angry spider to jump into my hair, I stretched my neck and got on my tip-toes. I looked side to side and underneath for the borders of her web. I learned their webs are incredibly hard to see, and I understood now, how correct that was. I was going to have to take my chances.

I tossed the insect at a 90-degree angle and, POW! Bullseye. The bug appeared to hit the web but didn’t hold, only bouncing off, falling to the floor. Before I could hop off the toilet seat to grab it, the web looked as though a tornado was whipping through it. Delilah couldn’t be spotted any longer, and it looked as though the web was rebounding at high speed. I almost fell over backward trying to get down off the toilet.

As I gained my footing, I looked up at the web. My heart was like a mallet in my ears, my arms wet noodles and the ever-elusive creepy-crawly sensation had set in. Had I somehow bounced her out of the web and possibly into my hair or back? I turned my face toward the web. All was exactly as it had been a few short seconds earlier. She was cool as a cucumber.

I was not.

I ran from the bathroom, up the short flight of stairs, and into our living room where my unsuspecting husband was sitting in his laz-E-Boy watching TV. My out of breath voice, sounding feverish, I tried to convey to him the bizarre episode I’d just witnessed. His eyes slowly swiveled from the TV to me and he uttered “Oh really?”. His response was something I’d expect if I had told him that a room had four walls. He obviously wasn’t sharing in my excitement.

My mind seared with the fantastic impression of what this beautiful little arthropod had just pulled off. My curiosity was now in overdrive, and I absolutely had to know more about these wee creatures. My eyes went from my husband, which were again riveted on the television, to my laptop. I plopped down in my recliner, opened the lid and went straight to my best pal Google. Here is what I learned:

1. The silk of the Daddy Longlegs does not contain any adhesive properties. The spider adapts by using an irregular patterned web to trap their prey. They use their long legs to toss stiff silk material over their quarry, immobilizing it and encasing the bug entirely. Then, they create a small hole in the newly spun sac, injecting their venom into a vulnerable area of their prey. Finally, the meal is attached to the webbing with tiny hooks they create. When their bellies are full, the delicious meal is then unhooked, dropping it to the floor.

2. The DLL will vibrate wildly in its own web if disturbed or under threat. The movement is so rapid, they are almost indistinguishable during the process. They basically turn into a total blur. This is what I witnessed when trying to “help”.

3. Instead of hanging right side up in their web, as many spiders do, DLL’s hang upside down.

4. They prefer damp or humid areas to set up house.

5. They are very messy housekeepers. In fact, their webs look like total disasters. They are constructed in a 3-D style creating a shapeless jumble of threads, rather than that of an orb, which looks like a wheel with spokes. In lieu of cleaning their webs like many other spiders, they may either ditch it, create a new web or, take ownership of other spiders’ digs. This latter choice not only gets them a new home, but a fine meal as well.

6. They are the natural enemy of various sizes of house spiders as well as flies, bees, wolf spiders, beetles and wasps, but it doesn’t end there. They will consume almost any intruding insect and, due to their long legs, they are able to pull off this feat despite the size of the invader. They truly are an asset to have around the house.

7. They may amputate one or more legs to slip away from capture. If you see a DLL with only six or seven legs, it’s possible it had been in battle. Unfortunately, the Pholcidae’s legs do not regenerate.

8. The Pholcidae spider is not poisonous contrary to popular belief. They do produce venom, but their fangs are not long enough to pierce human skin.

9. The life span of a male DLL is about a year, with a female living up to three years.

10. The female will tote her egg sac in her jaws. They typically produce 20 to 30 eggs and, after the spider-lings are born, she will continue to carry them in her mouth until the youngsters have honed their hunting skills. Only then will they leave their mother.

11. The male, prior to copulation, will caress her two front legs to get her in the mood.

Learning about these little creatures was just the beginning of my strange human/spider love affair. The more knowledge I gained, the deeper my respect for this fellow earth mate became.

Although Delilah has been gone for over a month now, two new DLL’s arrived. They picked respective corners and have been busy keeping the room free of unwanted pests. As soon as the shower is turned on, they go from spending the day motionless to busying themselves. As soon as the shower ends, the fun must be over and they head back to their corners, sitting still once again. I’m not sure if it’s the sound of the water (do spiders have ears?) or perhaps a subtle vibration the water emits. Their movement is immediate and comes long before there is a rise in humidity. I have sent an email to an entomologist to quench this curiosity.

As humans, we tend to fear, dislike, or keep a distance from what we aren’t familiar with. It’s a natural response that is funneled down from our ancestors, who had their share of defending themselves against a host of threatening things. There is a balance though, and that is through educating oneself.

The more we learn and allow ourselves to understand the things we don’t yet understand, the more tolerant and compassionate we will become. It’s up to each one of us to make things better on this planet we call home. Knowledge truly is power.

The next time you see a Daddy Longlegs in a corner of your home, welcome and thank them for keeping house right alongside you. Who knows, they just might thank you in return.