Tag: spiders

Thursday’s Theme Music

Mood: Freshfree

Thursday has trundled in, soft of foot and full of grace, delivering smoke in our space, and pleasing night air on our face.

It’s Thursday, 8/8/24, or 24/8/8.

Our smoke has risen into the unhealthy zone. Don’t know which fire is our source. We have many to select from. None too close but valleys channel it in. It looks like crap out there. Can’t see the mountains for the smoke, and the blue sky has been squirted into smoggy tones. 65 F outside my house today, we’re expecting a thirty degree rise to the high. No wind is blowing, so a sort of still deadness rules. I expect zombies to start emerging from the smoke at any moment.

We’ve been spoiled by the peaches acquired at the growers market in the last two visits. Both times we returned with the sweetest, tastiest, most perfectly ripe peaches. Sooo juicy. The blackberries were found wanting. Plump and juicy, yes, but only one out of four is sweet. We’re of the school that blacberries should be sweet and not sour, and the sour blackberries aren’t sitting well on my tongue. Besides those fruits, we picked up green onions — my wife is a fiend for ’em — and greens. Good stuff: local and organic. Non-GMO.

I posted something about Gov Walz the other day. A right wing friend commented, “He put tampons in the boys room.” I reacted, oh, no! How terrible! How tragic! Must cost billions of dollars. Such a waste, such a waste.

Well, no, I didn’t write all that. I thought it. I wasn’t going to write it because the issue doesn’t deserve any oxygen. As Joey from Friends said, “It’s something a cow would say. It’s a moo point.”

My wife has an ongoing thing with spiders in the bath. I use the shower stall, so this doesn’t involve me, but whenever she heads to the tub, she must clear out several spiders. We don’t kill spiders and these are all of the daddy longlegs variations. She plugs up the drain with a cloth to keep them from climbing up through there and removes them by means of a rolled, stiff piece of paper. She calls this her spider catcher. It’s actually an old invoice for blinds. We pulled it out a month ago to see when we purchased our blinds. It hasn’t been refiled because it’s now my wife’s spider catcher. She gives me a summary — “There were three spiders in there. I don’t know they’re coming from. They seem to get stuck. Stupid spiders. I move them and they go right back in there.”

With freedom still my theme this week, The Neurons are channeling Bread’s 1971 song, “Mother Freedom” into the morning mental music stream (Trademark discounted). My older sister had this album so I knew the song. I met my wife later that year. Her sister had the album on 8-track and regularly played it. It’s tres fam. God song for freedom week, though.

Freedom, keep walkin’
Keep on your toesand don’t stop talkin’ ’bout
Freedom, get goin’
Lots to be learned and lots to be known ’bout
People gotta reach ’em
Sit ’em right down and then you gotta teach ’em ’bout
Freedom, gotta win it
Gotta put yourself smack dab in it

Hey tomorrow
Now don’t you go away
‘Cause freedom
Just might come your way

Freedom, keep tryin’
People stay alive and people keep dyin’ for
Freedom, so don’t lose it
Ya gotta understand ya just can’t abuse it
Freedom, get movin’
Never gonna stop till everybody’s groovin’ on
Love for – one another
Callin’ some friend and callin’ some brother

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Just 89 days until the elections. Stay fresh, be strong, and remain postive. Vote Blue. Coffee has found its way into a cup and on into my systems, so all systems are go. Here’s the music video. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Coffeefied

Tuesday, June 4, 2024, has crept in. Sun and clouds play keep away. Air feels cool but humid. A sense of a storm is sneaking in. None is projected. Sunshine is expected to crack through and send the high to 84 F. We’re told it’s a heat wave starting but I don’t believe them. That’s science and facts, which is cover for made-up bullshit. Yeah, that’s some low-grade early morning snark.

Ashlandia is quiet and still this morning. Saw my first fawn of the year two hours ago. No bigger than Papi, my ginger flooft, the fawn was prancing up the street alongside momma. Love those little miniatures.

There’s all manner of news out there around the world. Most of it seems to fall in the ‘not-so-good’ bucket, like large and venomous invasive flying spiders and invasive snake-head fish which can stay on land for several days. The spiders aren’t flying like birds with wings. I would like to see spiders with wings, who also maybe sing. Then they’d start landing on our trees, singing us awake. Singing, flying spiders.

These flying spiders are actually ballooning. If they’re like ballooning humans, expect some festivals and an increase in wine sales.

I’m staying in Ashland for a comment about our newly paved Ashland Street. One of two main drags — the other is Siskiyou Boulevard — it’s actually half-paved at this point. No matter. It’s a vast improvement. I’m hoping the rest is paved before this re-paved piece begins crumbling. That’s the nature of our streets. We’re not the Romans, you know.

With the new pavement has come bold and vibrant street markings. But there’s new green lines, too. No locals I spoke with knew what they were, forcing me to investigate via the net. These green lines are apparently ‘bike boxes’.

“When the traffic signal is yellow or red, motorists must stop behind the white stop line behind the green bike box. Don’t stop on top of the bike box. Keep it clear for cyclists to use. No right turns on red at these intersections.” h/t to Marty Smith @ Williamette Week.

Well, wait then. These are now no-right turn on red intersections? That makes a huge impact on our driving habits.

My morning mental music stream (Trademark chillin’) features Smash Mouth performing “Then the Morning Comes” from 1999. “Why that song?” I coolly asked Les Neurons.

“That’s how it is with some people,” they replied. “Some just say and do shit out of the blue. They walk by and drop a bomb like it ain’t no thing. Just like the song implies.”

“Anyone in particular?” I inquired.

The Neurons snickered. “You probably have some ideas.”

I think these are the lyrics The Neurons are talking about:

[Pre-Chorus 1]
And the world’s a stage(And the world’s a faze)
And the end is near
So push rewind, just in time, thank anybody
You’re gonna do it again

[Chorus]
The way that you walk
It’s just the way that you talk, like it ain’t no thing
And every single day is just a fling
Then the morning comes

h/t to Genius.com

Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. Time for some clickety-click. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Wandering Thought

We’re cleaning up. Purging. Reducing our possessions.

I’m reaching into dark spaces in the garage not touched by humans in years. Gloves are donned. Because this is black widow country.

I don’t kill them. I want us to peacefully co-exist. But I don’t know if they got the word.

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Floofshine

Floofshine – Feelings of joy, happiness, or relief felt when encountering an animal. Origins: Boston, MA, United States, 1964

In Use: “Kai loved encountering Marvel when he got home after being at work. The dog’s grinning face and heavy tail wag was more satisfying than any work project, more relaxing than a glass of wine, and more inspiring than any music he’d ever heard.”

In Use: “Science is still working to verify floofshine’s impact on people’s health, but people with animals as housemates and friends already have a strong idea of the positive impact that floofs deliver.”

Recent Use: “Even after death, floofshine from a departed housefloof can linger for months, thanks to videos, social media, and photographs.”

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Saturday’s Wandering Thoughts

I’ve been thinking about spiders the last few days.

I don’t love or hate spiders; they’re another critter inhabiting the spectrum of our existence. I’ve been thinking abut them more because we don’t kill spiders in our household. We co-exist with a decent size population of them, including black widows. The biggest thing about all these spiders is that we end up with a lot of spider webs. I sometimes clean the webs away, which often displaces some. I don’t kill them as they run away from the cleaning, but I do apologize to them. No one likes being forced to move from their home.

Anyway, I turned on the kitchen light last night and headed for the sink. A windowsill rests just above the sink. A spider sitting on the window sill bolted away, as if I’d frightened them. About a quarter inch long, dark brownish with red legs, I don’t know what kind of spider they were.

Maybe the light spooked ’em, I thought, completing my task (which, not surprisingly, was washing the cats’ food bowls). Watching that spider tear along the window’s length prompted me to wonder again, how well does that spider see? I had the impression that despite eight eyes, they were running blind, maybe yelling, “Run away! Run away!”

Spider vision preoccupied me the night before. While cleaning away webs on the front porch, a spider dropped from the ceiling to the floor and scurried away. This was a ‘daddy long legs’. We have about seven hundred billion living around our house, I think.

That drop was about eight feet. Well, when the spider was dropping from the ceiling to the porch, did they have any idea of what was below them? Think about the courage that must entail. “Well, can’t stay here, gotta get out of here, so I’m just letting go. Wheee.”

Yes, I know that since they have so little weight and mass that they don’t have issues with gravity as we do, but still, dropping like that when you don’t know where you’re going?

Made me think of paratroopers in WWII.

Of course, on the other hand, spiders proably never learned to fear dropping to the ground. Not like us speaking before a crowd. Before we speak in a public gathering, we often absorb what people say about speakers. Lot of times, it’s mocking and casual insults. Listening to those things indoctrinates a fear of what they’ll say about us while we’re speaking, or how we might mess up and OMG, embarrass ourselves.

I conducted brief online research about spidey vision. Which reminds me; when Spiderman was created, why didn’t he grow eight eyes and eight limbs? How was he just limited to his spidey sense, making webs, and being a creepy crawler?

Articles I read about spiders confirmed what I suspected. Spider vision varies and often isn’t real great. Their hunting and nesting roles, along with their socializing skills and hunting style, guide their vision development and how the eight eyes generally function. (BTW, not all spiders have eight eyes.)

That spider may have kind of running blind, depending on those factors, but it was’t totally blind. Their running blind is more like if a human with vision problems who need corrective lenses might be running if they weren’t wearing those lenses.

Now I can imagine a spider with glasses sitting in a web, talking with another spider about how glasses improved their life.

Like other creatures, spiders present complicated and fascinating life form variations. I still don’t understand why they terrify so many people. Yes, they have venom and can bite and others can die from those bites but that’s not all of them.

I guess that’s another matter which I need to research.

11

The Course of Love

He was pleased to be going out with her. He’d met her at the coffee shop. She was a barista, and he was a regular. Three years older than her, it turned out. She was a student in her final year. He’d just graduated and was taking some time off in the area. Her eyes, gleaming jade and almond-shaped, felt like a laser cutting through him when she looked at him. She is it, he thought, with a wildly hammering heart. It turned out she was very funny and intelligent, studying English Literature, with plans, she said, “To be a CEO.”

They went to Louie’s for dinner, a safe place, none too romantic, with plans to zip over to Aqua to hear LEFT and dance after dinner — “We’ll see,” they told one another” — but then, sitting opposite him, laughing as she brushed a strand back off her face with a thumb — isn’t that endearing? — and her nails lack polish or gel, interesting! — he looked down at the table. She put her hands down, palms first, on the table, moments later.

She was speaking, but it was like light and sound left the room. Her hands on the table looked like giant spiders with long, slender legs. Thereafter, he couldn’t look at her without seeing her hands and noticing their resemblance to spiders. He didn’t understand at all, but it made him physically ill. It was easy to tell her, “I’m sorry, but I think we might need to call it a night. I’m not feeling well.” Then, as if his body felt that his declaration needed validated, he slapped a hand over his mouth, raced to the bathroom, and violently puked.

Looking at himself in the mirror as he washed up, he wondered, why? Perhaps he’d been drugged.

The next day, he went in for his usual coffee. She served him, concerned about the previous evening. He couldn’t look at her. All he saw were her spider hands. When he saw them, he immediately felt like he was going to be sick. Sighing, he left without drinking his coffee. He’d need to find another coffee shop.

It all saddened him. He’d liked that coffee shop, and he thought he loved that woman. A few days later, at The Roasting Company, he met another young woman. He felt madly in love with her, which shocked him – what kind of fool was he, falling in love so quickly and easily? – and he was leery of dating after spider hands, but she asked him out, telling him with a smile that he thought as intriguing as Mona Lisa’s, “Don’t worry. You’re in my hands now. I’ll take care of you.”

Her words startled him. He wondered if there was connection, but then dismissed it as silly, and accepted with pleasure.

1

The Missing Spider

“Did you see the black widow?” my wife asked.

Not much of a question. Two lived by the front door for a while, one by the garage side door, one by the garage door and another out back around the patio. “Which one?”

“The one in the garbage can.”

“No.”

“I don’t know how you missed her. She’s right there on the top. She’s huge.”

I went out to check. It was cold and daylight. She barely moved, contrary to black widow habits when exposed to light. She wasn’t huge. I thought her on the smaller side. She was on the front lip, in a little trough. I don’t understand the trash can’s little trough’s purpose but that’s where she took up residence. Not much space for a web. I imagine insect traffic is pretty low there.

I blew on her to see what she did. She flicked a few legs in annoyance. I closed the lid.

It stayed like that for a few days. The weather grew colder. Snow fell. We saw the low twenties. Her legs grew drawn in. I wondered if she was dead, but maybe she was curled up for warmth. I blew on her. She barely stirred.

She was gone this morning when I took out a bag of kitty litter potatoes for deposit. I looked around for her but it was raining, a warmer day, at thirty-seven, but still cold in spider land. Maybe she made her way into the house. Perhaps she just descended into the trash can or one of the bags.

I don’t know. I wonder about her. I worry a little bit. Black widows seem to lead lonely lives. Maybe there’s a private social aspect that I don’t know about.

Sorry I didn’t take a photo of her. I could post it here and you could let me know if you see her. If you do think you see her, tell her I said, “Hi.”

She’ll know what you mean.

7

The Spider Policy

There was a black widow scare the other night. My wife, finishing her bath and wrapped in a towel, called out for me with the warning, “There’s a black widow in the bathroom. Hurry, it’s running.”

So I ran. Grabbing a small plastic food storage container from the kitchen, I rushed down the hall. Followed by my wife, the spider had left the bathroom and was heading down the hall toward the guest room.

I took up pursuit. Closing as the spider reached the guest room carpet, I made a move to capture him. Seeing me coming, the spider accelerated across the floor as my wife said, “Get it, it’s getting away.”

After two attempts, I trapped it in the plastic. It ran in a circle, trying to escape as I studied it. “I don’t think this is a black widow. It’s not shiny and black enough, and doesn’t have that exaggerated shape.” I couldn’t see its underside.

My wife agreed. “What do you want me to do with him?” I asked. “Set him free outside?”

Yes.

I was a little reluctant. He’s clearly a house spider, hence his location, and I knew the yard was spider rich. A black widow lives in the corner of the front porch. She only comes out at night but turn on the light at midnight, and there she is, tensing and waiting.

The spider policy is a no kill, relocation thing. That means we have a lot of spiders around the house. With spiders are webs. I went about yesterday cleaning off all the webby eaves, corners and bushes. The process is to look for a spider in the web, give warning that the web will be removed so the spider has time to leave, and then clean away the web. Probably sixty percent of the webs are vacant, dusty with debris. Spiders built them and perished, or decided they didn’t like the location and moved away.

So many webs were evident yesterday. After 30 minutes of cleaning, I was relatively satisfied and put the broom away. Leaving the garage, I looked up —

And there was another.

I swear it wasn’t there before.

But —

I was done for the day. After a few minutes of contemplating the web and the policy, I headed for the garbage cans. Tomorrow was trash day. Time for other matters.

No spiders were harmed before or after this story. At least not by me. Now, the cats are a whole other matter. They are not as spider tolerant.

But they do leave those black widows alone.

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