Wildlife

Country living is an adventure; all sorts of friendly creatures come calling. There’s the occasional scorpion in the sink or bathtub, snakes in the chicken coop, and the lone, snuffling armadillo who scavenges nightly in my yard. But this has been the Summer of Plagues.

Move over, Pharaoh, and let me tell my story.

Even as I write, garden spiders are attempting to encase my entire house in circular, three-foot- diameter webs. These arachnids are large. Black and yellow, they make a distinctive reinforced zigzag pattern in the center of their webs, and they are implacable. They don’t understand a simple brush-off. They have the same mindset as wayward toddlers to whom time-out means nothing. One must resort to corporal punishment—spank the kid, squash the spiders.

But here’s my milquetoast confession: I can’t bear to kill them. As you can imagine, the battle is ongoing.

I went away for six days, and on my return, my roofed, unenclosed porch was practically screened-in by their enormous webs. They are fast workers, and they like to dangle from the eaves, especially around entrances. I cleared away the webs, and the next morning I walked out into a net of silken strands that brushed my face and caught in my mouth and hair. I found myself practically eye-to-whatever with a colorful, creepy spider. We both screamed.

Inside the house, and unbeknownst to me, small gray pantry moths ate their way into two bags of rice and a box of cereal. They consider cardboard, plastic, and waxed paper first-course delicacies on the way to the second-course entrée. They thrive in darkness.

Little by little, their numbers increased, until I realized something was wrong. I had to wave my arms to disperse the fluttering hordes; my kitchen became a moth pavilion. (To keep this narrative rated PG-13, I’m not mentioning the stomach-turning wormy larval stage, which I found when I decided to cook some rice. Yuck.)

I declared war. I emptied the entire pantry, washed all the surfaces, and threw out a lot of food. Armed with new airtight containers, I restocked. But I still had to vacuum the moths off the walls and ceilings for ten days. Finally, the onslaught dissipated. Why? Because moths I can squash.

I would write more, but it’s time to take up my broom and fight my way out the door. The sun is dimmed; the webs are closing in. The spiders are spinning, spinning, spinning. . .

Garden Spider