A SPIDER STORY

We had a drizzly day yesterday. I pretended I was an old man and napped, off and on, all afternoon. It is still cloudy today and cool. It is more like September than August, at least the cool part; it is usually not this rainy in either month.

I was going to talk more about, my ideas about our separation from Nature, and things we could do to remedy it. However, readers of this blog have as many good ideas as I do. I don't know anything, anybody else's doesn't. It is all a relationship. Nature is all around us. We need to embrace Mother Nature and love her. She gives us everything. It is a matter of opening our eyes and our hearts. What to do, will occur to us.

I have a little Nature story. My daughter, Laura, posted a picture of a Wolf Spider surrounded by her newly hatched offspring, on Facebook. Apparently, this creature was on her basement wall. It was an excellent picture and got many comments. I commented that I had a Wolf Spider story. I thought it might be a little too long for a comment on Facebook. Here it is.

Laura would have been little, as this was over fifty years ago. Donna {her Mother} and I were sitting in the living room across from each other. Suddenly, Donna got up and said, “Get up and walk towards me.” The expression in her eyes told me not to quibble. I did as she said. She then said, “Turn around.” I did and there sitting on the back of the couch, right next to where I was sitting, was the hugest spider I ever saw. It looked as big as a tarantula only without the fuzz. We captured it in a fruit jar. It was so big we could barely get the fruit jar around it. We released it to continue it's existence outside.

I don't know what would have happened if Donna hadn't spotted it. My relationship with the arachnid world was a little shakier than it is now. I am sure that if I experienced it walking on me it would have freaked me out. Donna did the perfect thing. Had she freaked out or told me to look without getting up first... who knows. It would not be such a good story.

I don't think at the time we knew the name of the creature, but we found it pictured in a Golden Book of spiders and identified it. We had most of the Golden Book Nature series. They are marvelous little books.

Of all of Nature's creatures I have been shyest of spiders. Not phobic, but more than wary. As children we caught garden spiders put them in jars and fed them flies and grasshoppers. It was fascinating to watch them spin up a grasshopper in a silk cocoon. I would pick up any non-stinging creature with my fingers, but not spiders. I do it now. I rescue them from the sink and release them outdoors. [Why do bugs end up in the sink- do they fall in- they can't get up the slippery sides] However, spiders are still a special category of creature, to me.

Yes, Nature is marvelous, all of it. What is not to Love? It is only our separation that causes our judgements and the occasional willies.

I need to accompany Jamie, to the Amish for milk, and then to town.

Love and Peace, Gregg