Death To The Webbies!

I never liked Charlotte and I’m glad she’s dead. My only regret is that her multitude of children survived her – nasty little shites. I don’t know about you, but if I found a huge great spider web – I don’t care if it said ‘Some Polony!’ or ‘Fan-bloody-tastic!’ – I wouldn’t stand around gawping at it and hoping for more. I’d grab a big stick and a can of bug spray and swat that thing down.

Three years ago, a large and troublesome spider decided to spin its web directly over our driveway, between the tree and the hedge. Every evening when we came home from work it would be there to taunt us, sometimes dangling pendulously ready to fly at us on the smallest puff of wind, sometimes crouched cunningly, not immediately visible, on some part of its gigantic man trap. By the morning the web would have disappeared, torn down by birds or the wind, but we always knew we’d have to run the gauntlet again that night. Neither Mr. Lonie nor I am the bravest of souls when it comes to spiders, and fearing any stick-waving would precipitate an angry leaping attack (à la Arachnophobia) or inadvertently bring the 16 gauge web and hairy fanged monster down in a tangle upon us, our usual course of action was the ‘duck-and-run’.

Aside from convincing our neighbours we were completely bonkers, and the occasional run-in with an anchor strand that could garrotte the unwary pedestrian, this strategy worked fairly well until the unfortunate day when, while Mr. Lonie was interstate, a great-with-child Lonie was forced to face the horror alone. With no-one to assure me I’d clear the web and its hideous occupant, I ducked and ran lower and faster than ever before. Sucked in, spider! I exulted in my athletic escape for about one second – until I sprawled flat on my face, grazed my hands and, in a cruel twist on any superhero’s genesis, mystically imbued Miss Lonie with the Superklutz powers she has today.

That shelob’s reign of terror has ended, but now the horrid spawn of a million spiders are popping up everywhere – in the tissue box, on the clothes line, on the computer desk, the coffee table – I even have to watch the food on the stove lest some evil web-spinner lowers itself into the bolognaise. I see such transgressions as a personal affront. Come into my house and crawl around my babies, will you? Lie venemously in wait in my dogs’ kennel? Drag your ungodly behemoth selves across my lounge-room windows? Then it’s no more live-and-let-live. Aranea, Joy and Nellie must die.