I think I have a homing spider. Last night, as I write, while I lay in bed re-reading a Rosemary Sutcliff novel (history stories for young adults), I looked up at the ceiling and saw a spider directly above ma heid.
It wasn’t particularly big but, as you know, spiders are the pets of Satan, and I decided it must be exiled from my domain.
So, I got my trusty jar and slip of paper (for a makeshift lid), caught the fellow expertly, hirpled through to the kitchen (sole of foot still sore from ill-advised wild-swimming experience, exclusively revealed here last week), and deposited it out the back door.
Next morning, I woke up and thought, ‘I wonder what’s on the ceiling today,’ and there he was: the self-same spider in exactly the same spot.
He must have opened the kitchen door then trauchled all the way across the kitchen (long distance for a spider), opened the hall door, trauchled along the hall, opened the bedroom door, crawled along the side of the bed, then all the way up the wall and over to his spot on the ceiling, right above ma heid.
It was uncanny. You say: “How do you ken it was the same one, like?” I ken it was the same one because it had the two long legs in front and the glaikit expression on its face.
Oddly enough, as I sit here on the sofa typing, I’ve just noticed two more on the sitting-room ceiling. They’re the same species (two long legs in front, as above), but a bit smaller, and one of them is wearing glasses.
They’re looking down at me and thinking: ‘There’s Rab back on the sofa again. He must be a homing human.’
If yon one in the bedroom is still there tonight, I’m going to have to get the jar again. Spider: ‘Oh, not this ruddy palaver again.’
Well, they should get their own houses instead of squatting here. I freely confess that spiders give me the willies. Sometimes, if I’ve a big one in the jar, the trip to deposit it ootside is fraught with panic. What if it gets oot and runs up my arm, doing a wee tickly jig just to terrify me?
I know that, in this country, they’re nearly all harmless, but they don’t look it. They always look like they’re up to something. And it’s not anything nice.
A pal of my mine, a country lass, used to take them in her hand and sometimes frighten me with them. Disgraceful behaviour: a man in my position, reduced to a hopping and hollering wreck by a wee wumman taunting me with a spider.
Hell’s bells: reporting live from the scene here, I’ve just noticed three more of the same species on the sitting-room ceiling. That’s five. And one in the bedroom makes six. Indeed, I’ve just checked and there’s another spider in the bedroom, a different one, with a wee body and lots of long legs.
This is getting out of hand. The hoose is being over-run by arachnids. Arachneds more like. Mind you, at least they’re pretty quiet.
They just sit there and periodically say “Aye” with a sigh. Live and let live, I guess. But not right above ma heid when I’m trying to sleep.
