But first I have to tell you about my spider…

I am not an insect-phobe (I’m sure there’s a technical word for this but looking it up will be wasting precious writing time and so I leave it at insect-phobe until Anymouse corrects me in the comment section). I can muster the courage to crush a fly and spray whole cans of Raid at an army of ants, and I’ve always been able to handle spiders smaller than nickels just long enough to remove them from the corners of the living room and place them outside. But I never, ever fancied I’d find myself actually feeling something akin to affection for a lowly arachnoid.

Clearly, somewhere deep down, EB White has influenced my otherwise sensible self into thinking that spiders have purpose and personality and a soft spot for doomed farm animals, because I have come to know a spider I call ‘Mama’. She has lived for months just beyond the east window of the master bedroom; there she has built the most elaborate shimmering web the size of a bath towel. She has spent her days hanging from the center of her spectacular creation, shuttling with purpose to the fringes of her web to collect the insects that have blundered there. She has wrapped them up in tiny bundles, her eight synchronized legs working quickly to mummify her prey. She leaves them there to hang and marinate. She eats them later when I’m not looking, not because she senses my distaste but, probably, because they taste better after a few hours of subtle tenderizing – a spider’s version of brining, this mummification thing. Nevertheless, I have always thanked her for her consideration.

O and G have made it habit to charge into the bedroom each morning as soon as My Better Half has deigned to rise so that they can say good morning to ‘Mama’. It was on one such morning, a week ago, that we noticed Mama had put on weight, she was fairly bulging at the abdomen. Obviously, she had either eaten a chipmunk for dinner or she was swollen with spider-child. I thought to myself, am I imagining things or does a spider show just like a very pregnant human female? I wondered if she’d slept poorly, feeling all those little legs kicking and twirling and restless in her spider-like uterus. I announced to the kids, Mama is going to have babies and they were instantly gleeful and pleased and then, G, recovering her senses, asked with uncharacteristic solemnity, “But then she’ll die. Just like Charlotte. Won’t she?”

We were momentarily quiet while the possibility of Mama’s imminent death sunk in. And then, whatever doubt I harbored about her pending reproduction was swiftly cast aside as we watched Mama charge to the Northeast corner of her web, rip a struggling bug from the sticky strands and eat him on the spot, no brining, no mummification, this was instant and terrifying in it’s savagery. Her unrestrained feasting seemed so natural and necessary, like an engorged woman named Mildred, nine months pregnant and ravenous, tearing into a box of jelly donuts.

This fit of extreme hunger was the memory that Mama chose to leave us with for awhile. I thought it was the last time we would see her, her insect slaughter a sort of parting shot across the bow. Until the other night. Just when I’d grown accustomed to the idea that she was off being busy somewhere else doing busy spider things or, gasp, she had passed and we didn’t notice, just as natural as the turning of leaves in Autumn or the waxing and waning of the moon, there she was again.

After days of her absence, I had thought to check for her in the dark of midnight. I went to the window and saw her there, gathering up the lower half of her web. I could barely make her out, struggling to drag in the perfect spectacle of it. I couldn’t tell if she was eating it or rolling it but it was clear she was laying waste to her home. I thought, She and it will be gone by morning.

But upon waking and drawing back the drapes, there it was, another beautiful sparking web with one glaring omission, no ‘Mama’ hanging at the center. And for two days now, she has not returned. We have gazed at it, hoping, but nothing stirs? And, then this morning, I was trying to muster the heart to tear that web, once and for all, from the window casing when I noticed a tiny pale little life making it’s way across the intricacy. It was Mama’s mini-me. The same in every way except stature. And my soul stirred.

Is it possible that Mama remade her web, lovingly, proficient with the purpose of imminent death, in the final hours before her eggs hatched? Was I witness to the spider version of ‘nesting’? Will at least one of Mama’s progeny take up residence in the web there outside the bedroom window? And will I have to bring it in for winter, allow it to set up shop above the radiator in the bathroom for fear of waking to frozen Mama-me one icy cold December morning?

(I’ll keep you all informed about Mama-me’s progress and her plans for Winter because, well I just assume, that you’re all as amazed and taken with her story as I am.)