For a period of time over Christmas and New Year I shared the kitchen bench with a huntsman spider. A small one. It seemed to like the compost bucket and I imagined it was eating the tiny flies that hover in there, providing an ‘ecosystem service’.
Sometimes it would be at the other end of the bench near the kettle. I took care not to harm it. It was not harming me. The one day it wasn’t there anymore. I missed it.
Yesterday I spotted two more. It was the end of a very hot weekend (35-36°C) for mid-March. (Just 10°C above average!) I think these two spiders, one in the kitchen and one on the inside of the upstair roller shutter, were trying to escape the heat.
On one level I can understand that people are frightened of spiders but on the other I can’t. But fear isn’t rational. Once I rescued a huntsman from a woman’s car. She could even go near the car she was so frightened. I went to the car and reached in to the spider, I must have had a container of some sort, but the spider ran past it and up my arm. I remember the incredible lightness of its touch.
If only we could touch the earth so lightly.
Why would a spider—huntsman—come into a bathroom which would seem to be akin to a desert? Surely the garden is a nicer place to hang out! Was it compelled in by the over hot day last week? But there it is trying to hide from me, the monster. It freezes stock still and waits while I shower. I give it space, leave it be, while I marvel and wonder at its ability to run up, down and across the smooth white tiles.