Baby Spiders

A few days ago, I evicted a very large hairy spider from the bathroom and house.  

I have arachnophobia but I've worked at controlling it because, I know that spiders eat a lot of insects and because I felt that it was fundamentally blasphemous.  To be afraid of something so much smaller than myself and something that, in most cases, can't really do me any real harm, is, more or less, accepting the thoughts that I'm weak, that it is bad, both thoughts contrary to my faith in creation and my upbringing as a Christian (which upbringing I have largely moved away from).  Also, killing is not, to me, an acceptable first response, to anything.

In fact, I quite admire spiders like the wolf spider which is a wonderful mother.  Those are her babies on her back in the photo below.

Years ago, in California, I was clearing weeds and kept thinking I saw movement to my left and behind me, in my periphery.  I kept stopping to look and didn't see anything, until...there she was, about the size of a quarter, loaded down with maybe 20-50 babies.  I watched her for about 20 minutes.  She was transporting her brood.  Every once in a while one or a few would fall off her back and she'd stop, turn slightly and wait for them to climb back on.  While wolf spiders can be quite quick (they're hunters, not web builders; they go after their prey.) it took her quite a while to cross what had been a driveway, then overgrown.  I watched her and let her go.

Today I had to kill the remaining baby spiders in our bathroom because, if they were allowed to remain in the house, they would grow up the size of their mother, who I'd evicted.  I'm guessing that their bite would not be pleasant.  These spiders, which might be very large wolf spiders, are much, much larger than a quarter.  They're very intimidating but not aggressive, as most spiders, even the wolf, are not.

The day after I'd evicted the mother, I discovered that she'd left an egg sack that had opened and dozens of baby spiders were there waiting for her.  I sucked up many dozen babies and evicted them as well.  I also sucked up many babies and threw them in the canal where they will most likely be drowned or eaten by fish and I finally flushed a couple of dozen of them.

I noticed later there were more, in the same place, probably waiting to be carried elsewhere by their mother.  Many had undoubtedly gotten away into cracks and later emerged.  Today, I killed more, squashed them and flushed them down the toilet.  Some of them hung on a strand of nest web and dropped on the floor.  I squashed them.  As I squashed them, I began to cry, for the tiny baby spiders I was killing; alive only a few days.  

Am I silly?  Am I crazy?  Some would say so.  I don't care.  It hurt me to think of them as babies, so tiny, so delicate.  And, I didn't make them.  They have a purpose with which is it not mine to interfere.  But, they were in my space.  They will grow to a very large size.  They bite.  There were dozens of them.  I have myself to think about.  But, I cried.  Why is this world this way; that I have to kill them to feel safe?

And, yet, I remembered myself, brought my attention back to myself, with these questions remaining but the emotional impact reduced and some degree of separation with the part of me wrapped up in this drama and another wondering.  What's done is done, or maybe not; I might have to kill more as they emerge from their hiding places.  What is, is.