Once upon a time (last week), in a not-so-far-away cabin, I reached for the bag of coffee on my kitchen shelf. Placing it on the countertop to open it, my peripheral senses reared like a spooked horse at a claw-like scuttle that shouldn’t have been there.
Yanking my hand back, I saw – to my horror! – one of those impossibly giant house spiders on it. The hot scalpel-incision of fear sliced through me as my body spiked with adrenaline. One panic-flap later, the spider landed on the countertop and skittered beneath the microwave…
Oh, the bony lurch and scuttle of them! The queasy jerk of that knuckle-like cluster! Why do they insist on having so many bloody legs? And as though eight weren’t enough, each leg has SEVEN joints. Seven! What a revolting clot of knees and elbows, wilfully parading in erratic black legginess.
Much as I’d like to think of myself as highly evolved, something ancient in me clearly still believes Panic-Flapping is the appropriate response to a spider. Nonetheless, I’ve never killed them, resorting always to a dignified glass-and-paper eviction: politely escort the offending leg-cluster off the premises, shut the door and breathe again.
Because if I’ve seen it and I know it’s still there, I can’t relax.
And it struck me: I’ve often done the same thing with fear. In the past, I’ve treated uncomfortable inner experiences much like spiders: recognise, locate and firmly eject. Then reassure myself it’s gone and won’t come back (good luck with that!).
And it turns out that house spiders (well, in the UK, anyway) are shy little things who want only to run away and hide from us; they’re small and physically vulnerable, while we’re massive and infinitely dangerous to their well-being.
Which means they have more reason to be afraid of us than we do of them.
Four days later, I came home and returned to the scene of the crime, reached trepidatiously for the coffee again. Sure enough, there behind the coffee bag, in a little web across the gap where my tray rests upright against the wall, that brittle little creature knuckled back into its sanctuary like a hermit crab in its shell. Despite being flung halfway across the kitchen and hiding under the microwave, it had found its way back to its lair.
So, good old life had planted a hairy little opportunity in my path: to pause and try something different. What if this little leggy dot of consciousness is every bit as alarmed by me as I am by her? What if I named her Susan, and let her stay? What if she and I embarked on a little experiment, accepting our mutually undesirable presence, just to see if that could maybe – just maybe – be ok?
I wonder: can two frightened creatures share a room without either one needing to be eradicated?
So I’m letting Susan stay for now – no matter how many knuckled, unshaven legs she insists on sporting.
In any case, it’s always handy to have a housemate who eats flies.
