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The Spider in the Rearview Mirror

I have a spider in my rearview mirror.

This not a metaphorical spider in a symbolic mirror; I'm talking about a garden-variety California orb-weaver. I've only seen it once, but it lives in the gap between the rearview mirror's glass and housing. Every night it comes out, spins a little web between the mirror and the window, and retreats back to its lair. Every morning I destroy the web.

Occasionally, I try to root out the spider with a twig, but I can't seem to get at it. I could probably flush it out with a blast of water from the hose. But I haven't bothered yet, because what really fascinates me about the spider is its tenacity, its single-mindedness. It doesn't get discouraged. It doesn't move its home to a more promising location. It seems to have no ability to process this particular input and react accordingly. The spider and I, we have a failure to communicate.

Fundamentally, I think this is why arachnids and insects are so creepy. Sam raised this idea a while back. If you're hiking and you step near a snake, it will rear up and hiss at you to warn you off. You scared it, it's trying to scare you. Message sent, message received. Reptiles, mammals, birds... there's something comforting about how you can communicate with these creatures, at least at some very basic level. The Brotherhood of the Vertebrates.

But arthropods are alien creatures. Little unfathomable machines. Is it going to bite me? Scuttle away? Ignore me? What is the spider thinking when it fastens those eight beady little eyes on me?

Posted by Evan Goer on Nov. 15, 2006 at 8:42 AM | Comments (9)

Comments

Gah.... you can just rock me to sleep tonight, Evan.

Ergh. Hate spiders...

Posted by Mur on Nov. 15, 2006 at 9:38 AM
I'll tell you what they are thinking. "Can I paralyze this thing with my neurotoxins and suck out its still living juices?", thats what they are thinking. C'mon, eight eyes? Also, spiders are the #1 cause of <a>Necrotic Arachnidism Syndrome</a>.

It has invaded your domain, your duty seems clear.

Posted by Sam on Nov. 15, 2006 at 12:11 PM
http://www.badspiderbites.com/brown-recluse-spider-bite.php

Because I can't link stuff like I used to.

Posted by Sam on Nov. 15, 2006 at 12:13 PM
Elana and I once had a spider in our car. We would see it scurry and sometimes see a web on our dash- no big deal. Then one day, while making a left turn in a busy intersection, I see a blurry creepy things hanging in midair. It was so close to my face it was out of focus (I was trying to look at the cars whizzing by). This spider was middling size...it's body was the size of a lego-person's yellow smiley head.

It not only startled me, but I was genuinely scared for my life as I was trying to avoid the spider and oncoming traffic.

As I made my harrowing trek across the lanes and pulled into the nearest parking lot, I ducked my head. Then I rolled down my window and batted the little monster into the street where I rolled over him. Twice.

Evan, do not let this happen to you. Find a way to excise this demon-bug from your car before it endangers your life.

Remember, objects seen in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

Posted by Adiv on Nov. 15, 2006 at 12:36 PM
Sam, no more links! You're scaring Mur. And me.

Adiv, you just reminded me of a story from college. One weekend I was hanging out with Eric and Byron, and they got the bright idea of going to Disneyland. So we piled a whole bunch of UCSD people in a van, arrived in Anaheim at the crack of dawn, ran around the park all day without a rest, and left at park closing time (1am? something like that.)

The point is, we were all zonked, including our driver. So he started swilling Coca-Cola, and he had something like FOUR No-Doz. (He was a big guy.) He's driving along, and everyone else was asleep or half-asleep. Suddenly our driver lets out a scream, swerves off the highway, and comes to a screeching halt. Everyone jolts awake. "What happened, what's going on!"

"There... is... a HUGE spider on the windshield!" he gasps. Well, we all just fell out of our seats laughing, as our driver started crumpling up discarded coke cans and throwing them at the spider. It was pretty funny at the time, although in retrospect we were lucky we weren't all killed.

Epilogue: when we arrived safely home and all crashed in the common room, the driver was mumbling to himself, "My heart is racing. My heart is racing. I can't close my eyes." No-Doz is dangerous stuff.

Posted by Evan on Nov. 15, 2006 at 1:13 PM
Oddly enough, I had a similar experience to Adiv's -- spider dropping down from the roof of the car and ending up right in my face -- except I was less lucky. The car went into a tree and got totalled. Happily, I was just fine, and the spider was killed by the airbag.

Posted by Auros on Nov. 15, 2006 at 1:15 PM
It looks like there is a phenomena out there. Some weird spider-car connection, Here's some more evidence:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZJHIyHXEx2Y http://www.fireland.com/05/spider.html http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index.php?qid=20061108115411AAAabSW

Posted by Adiv Zelony on Nov. 16, 2006 at 11:38 AM
Found my way to your post via a link from Adiv. Here is a link to another post of a similar nature that seems pertainent. Be careful with whom you pick your battles. Evidence is strong that 100,000 ants are a lot smarter than one homo sapiens.
```
http://lagatta.livejournal.com/39564.html
```
(Sorry, don't know how to create a link.)
Posted by Jim McElroy on Nov. 16, 2006 at 6:29 PM
My Mom had this exact same thing going on when I visited her in Metairie, LA back in late July. I first learned of this when I proposed to borrow the car to go get groceries, and she said, "Don't kill my spider!" My mom can't stand creepy crawlies in the house, from the understandably icky roaches to the far-too-cute-to-be-offensive little pink geckos, but she has adopted this spider.

It came out while I was at Whole Foods. It had already spun a nice-sized web off the driver-side mirror. Boy did it get startled when I took off for home again!

I tried to get pictures, but it was awkward. What little I managed is up at <a href="http://neworleans.metblogs.com/archives/2006/07/atemporarynew.phtml">New Orleans Metblogs</a>. Just another common orb weaver, doing its thing and adapting to human technology.

Posted by Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little on Nov. 21, 2006 at 7:52 AM

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This entry was posted on November 15, 2006 by Evan Goer.

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