I’ve been thinking about spiders lately. Not a lot, not really. Just noticing them on the periphery of my vision, right there at the edge of things.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Anansi Boys, which is most certainly about spiders. There are a lot of them in the book, but the truth is that I had spiders on my mind well before I started reading it.
At the corner of the porch, right by the driveway, Sam found a web. And in that web was a spider, fat and spiny and striped — her body perhaps the size of my thumbnail, which is fairly big for a spider.
He called us over and we watched as a small fly flew into the web, we watched while the spider carefully spun and wrapped and folded the fly out of life.
They named her Mary Ann, my children. Every day they go and check on her. Sometimes she’s in her web and sometimes she’s up against the house, hiding underneath one of the siding, just her body and a few of her spindly legs visible between the slats.
Past few days, every time we check, Mary Ann is still in her usual spot. I think she’s getting ready to put out an egg sac and I told the kids what that means. It was a little sad, really. I liked having Mary Ann out there. I don’t know that I want a thousand of her, but I liked her.
And there were spiders, in the movie we went and saw last night. I didn’t have a huge and delightful reaction to Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, but I did like the spiders and the little song they sang as they mended the hero’s suit.
And there were spiders in Microcosmos which we watched today while it rained. Quite a few spiders, actually.
I’ve never been a big fan of spiders, really. I don’t have a phobia or anything, I just don’t particularly care for them. They spin webs and, despite my occupation, there’s a metaphor there about dishonesty that I can’t quite shake. And then there’s the poison. I don’t like people who spin dishonesty, I don’t like people who inject poison into others.
There are too many people out there who are like that, too many spiders.
Mary Ann was the first one I really felt kind towards, in all honesty.
In Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep?, spiders are one of the only animals that cannot be a part of fellowship, communion, or sympathy within a community. I know a few spiders. I don’t like them.
But Gaiman’s little clay spider in Anansi Boys is quite the exception. As is Spider himself. And Anansi, now that I think of it.
And, I suppose, so is Mary Ann.
No point to any of this. Just thinking about spiders…