Arachnid Universe(William Cline) Arachnid Universe

My youngest son walked through our front door last evening, sputtering and cursing. Apparently a spider had spun its web across the steps to our front porch. Now it was time, according to him, that all spiders die.

“I thought spiders didn’t bother you,” I said.

What came immediately to my mind was the day his first grade teacher called to inform my wife and me that my son – who was now cursing the very existence of the eight-legged menace - was the only child, in a room a twenty-eight easily grossed-out children, that would allow spiders to crawl on him. Not just one spider; several, according to the slightly shaken teacher. Big; very ugly.

“My mouth was open,” he said.

“Maybe you should wave a stick in front of you when you walk up to the house, and keep your mouth shut.”

“Maybe we should get some poison spray and kill all the spiders.”

“Not happening, son of mine,” I said. “They’re everywhere.”

His mother added: “Spraying them will just kill the weak ones, and make the ones that survive stronger.” She smiled at our son in the loving way only mothers can smile. “It is the spiders, not the cockroaches, that will inherit the earth when we are gone,” she finished.

“Not if we get them now,” my son said. “Get them before they take over.”

“And they are all ugly,” his mother added, still smiling.

“Yes, dearest, they are ugly; no argument there. But,” and I turned back to my son, “they keep the flies in check.”

Just to be clear; I do not like spiders. But, our paths have crossed so many times in my life that I almost feel some connection to them.

The connection was first forged back when I was in the third grade, during school’s science fair. I had recently become so fascinated by the spider webs in our garden and shrubbery, that I entered our school’s science fair that year with an entry titled: How Do Spiders Spin Their Webs?

Being in the third grade, with an attention span measured in minutes, I quickly lost interest in actually writing and producing the science project, but kept up with the research, research that took me into the spider’s world: in the shrubbery; up into the grape arbor; crawling under blackberry brambles.

By the way, blackberry brambles are very creepy underneath, just so you know.

I found out that spiders talk to boys in the third grade; at least the big ones do. Hanging from geometrically imperfect webs in open spaces between the shrubs, the subjects of my research were not enthusiastic about my methods.

“Are you aware,” one large spider said, as I poked him with my finger, “that the act of you watching me has a tendency to change what you observe?”

“What?”

“Okay, let me put it simpler, so you can understand: You are scaring away the flies. Ads a bit of uncertainty to my life, thank you very much.”

The first thing I learned about spiders is that they can be very sarcastic. “Sorry, I just want to find out how you spin your webs.”

“Carefully,” the spider answered, and I heard some others close by chuckle. It was obviously a joke among spiders. “Listen, it isn’t something we think about. What we have to concentrate on is placement.”

“Placement?”

“Yeah, are we near a known flying bug route? Is there garbage around, or smelly flowers?”

“Flowers?”

“Anything that smells attracts flying bugs.” The spider turned on his web, aiming what had to be his eyes at me. “You’ve seen the cows in the pasture next door?”

“They stink,” I said. “The whole place stinks.”

“Exactly so. And because they stink, the cows are covered in flies, from head to tail. We’ve been trying to figure out how to spin a web on one of those,” the spider said. “We would never have to worry about our next meal, ever again.”

“So, you can’t help me with how you spin your web, can you?”

“I got this thing at the end of my abdomen,” the spider said, now sounding a little irritated. “I aim it and think about catching bugs, and the web comes out.”

“That’s it?”

“Hey, ask a millipede how it walks in a straight line.” More chuckling from the spiders close by. “It is the same process. Oh, and while you're at it, ask them when they are going to grow wings; they look yummy.”

So I forgot about the science fair, and went on with my life.

The morning following my son's unfortunate run-in with a spider web, I walked out on the front porch. The sun was making its way up the western sky, and the light was coming through the slats in our fence, throwing well-defined bars across our yard. At the side of our house is a fir tree that I planted when our children were young. Now it was tall, with the lowest boughs just above my head. Beneath its lowest boughs, the golden beams of sunlight illuminated a multitude of webs.

The webs were like galaxies: circular creations seeming to float everywhere in no ordered relation to each other. I could almost see the expanding arachnid universe, there beneath the tree, each spiral galaxy complete with an eight-legged black hole at its center.

Tentatively, I walked into the yard, approaching the fir’s outer boughs. The wind was moving gently around the house, flowing beneath the tree. I wanted to talk to the spiders hanging there in their micro-universe, discuss the fortunes of casting their nets in what had to be an entomological super-highway, knowing how many flying bugs those winds washed across our back deck and porch. But I kept silent, knowing that they would realize I was not in the third grade, and that, indeed I, too, had inadvertently walked through a number of their webs, using some of the same language my son had used the night before in reference to their work.

Instead I pulled the digital camera out of my pocket, aimed it at the arachnid universe, and took a few pictures. When I reviewed them, you could not tell there were any spider webs within the frame of the shots.

I looked at the arachnid universe, there beneath the fir tree, and thought: Tricky, very tricky. That must be how they get all the flies.

From just inside the front door I heard my wife, using the tone of voice she usually reserved for me or one of our children who she felt needed gentle correction: “If you want to inherit the earth some day, stay out of my shower.”

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