Madness is inviting a stranger into your home, making them comfortable and having a chat. Then taking all manner of posed photos with yet more food but to cap it all when it became apparent that the house is not big enough for both of us I had to rehouse them in a polite and gentle fashion, of course – although he could have a sore head.
Sydney was doing his usual spinning but this time outside the front door which is tantamout to suicide and web demolition and because he was eating a tasty snack of Blue Bottle and house fly I thought I would move him. This was in order that he could finish breakfast in peace and have a safe place to rest his weary legs.
There is always a plastic beaker, probably from some race meeting & pinched for safe drinking, residing in the conservatory, which is very handy along with a glossy card for catching spiders. Well, last year, no it was the year before, I throttled many of his English relatives in the conservatory, mainly because they were rude, anti-social and jolly messy. The consequence of this mass murder was a year of dreadful karma and now I just catch and toss them into the nettles over the back fence - well there are brambles too so it is not a total sting.
Sydney is a Wasp Spider from abroad and has moved here because of Global Warming and he likes the English climate so he must be one web short of a wonder. How he survived last winter and spring and this summer's cold I do not know. I thought he had packed his bags and moved back down to the South of France again but it seems not.
To cut a long story a little shorter I thought I would try to draw/sketch Sydney, (ha ha, more like spider’s scrawl,) in order to get some literal inspiration for the Jungle Book. Unfortunately, I could not find a sketching pad, well I could but it was buried under a ton of paperwork. Then inspiration struck and I grabbed my intelligent and fool proof camera to take some happy snaps of Sydney reclining like royalty on the dining room table – yes, I know but it was a big enough area to keep and catch him on if he escaped. This was fine but the sun was making the plastic glary and anyway it was a little scratched to begin with. Not one to be beaten, I went to find a glass jar only to discover that he who has the grots had put it into the recycling box. Ah well. On top of the conservatory fridge I spotted a glass flue, well plastic to be precise, but it was large and long so it would go over the beakers; which meant that I could just lift them off Sydney and not have to shake legs with him - there is a limit to my hospitality.
When I got back to the lounge Sydney had made himself at home and was eating his Blue Bottle with gusto. The house fly had been spun into a cocoon for later consumption and hung aimlessly in Sydney's newly spun gossamers - well it was not intricate enough to be called a web. As Sydney was well occupied with mandibles munching away he would probably not have noticed me lifting the beakers but even so I put the flue on them all and lifted the beaker up through the flue top. This made Sydney kick up his legs and spin around holding on to his breakfast but I ignored this and relocated him into a more photogenic setting. There were some wonderful pictures of him consuming the breakfast in a possessive manner.
I found myself talking to him, well it is one step up from talking to myself. After a few shots the threshold was reached and boredom set in so it became time to re-house the visitor, with no table manners, into the back garden. It would have only taken a few minutes with a normal spider but it became apparent that Sydney liked a smooth and warm surface. Try finding that in the Autumn garden when all around is damp and the patio set has been put away – not that it was actually out for long this year. I could have put him on the plastic window ledges but there is a wasps’ nest in the roof and they were on a huge morning patrol. I thought it prudent not to make small talk with them – even though a spider bit me years ago it transpired that I was not allergic to them (they just make my ears curl up when they are humgous). Wasps on the other hand make everything swell and curl up so are best avoided.
Anyway the search for a smooth and warm surface continued and the compromise was the back fence which is not too smooth but it was warm. Now, do you think Sydney wanted to get off the glossy card? No, that is right, he went round and around spinning more of a web around the solitary fly, making sure it stuck fast along with him. In the end I had to give him a friendly nudge with my finger but even so Sydney had made such a sticky web that it stuck to me and enabled him to stick firm.
By now the conversation had lost its urbanity and the card was given a heft tap, Sydney fell off and who knows what happened to his breakfast. Sydney turned impolite at this point and waved a front leg at me in anger by which time my opinion of him had dropped and I went to clear the mess from Sydney’s original web.
All this made me wonder that if I went around and fouled surfaces, killed my husband and any other living thing silly enough to come close, littered said dead bodies on the floor, would I get locked up, and perish the thought, executed? Yes of course I would after I had cleared the mess up. Why then is it a crime to commit arachnoside. And on that mad thought, I must see what sort of inspiration Sydney has inspired from his photo shoot. Good job he who has a dislike for housework has gone out for the morning!
