What?!?! There’s actually a National Save A Spider Day? I am way ahead of you. I’ve been honoring arachnids long before it was environmentally sound and before I’d ever heard of Charlotte.

When I learned that spiders survive on other insects, there was no contest. Two notable exceptions: the black widow and the recluse whose bites could be fatal. But other varieties are free to roam my home.

I once cornered a wolf spider which, even if good, looked very, very bad.  My skin simply would not tolerate a furbearing arachnid around.  But in isolation (I do apologize) he died and in a state of rigor mortis, seemed to have shrunk until he looked furless and harmless.  I learned something.

But oh, the reaction of my granddaughter when we were to inhabit a lakeside cottage in Wisconsin and she discovered granddaddy longlegs on the door frame! They didn’t wish to join us. They were welcoming us (in my opinion more effectively than a pineapple in colonial times) to our week at Lake Geneva. My granddaughter recoiled at the sight. I felt I’d failed both granddaughter and grandspiders.

So I have a little work to do.

© 2007 Phyllis I. Harris. Original for CCF (Harris grants CCF first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).