INVASION of the SPIDERLINGS!!!

I was sitting outside having a smoke with my coworker when we noticed a little white string flying around. That's weird. Then she noticed a tiny spider on me. I brushed it off. More kept showing up. Before I knew it I had about fifteen black spiderlings all over my head and shoulders. It drove me crazy for the next half hour as wee babes kept crawling around in my hair. ARG! They were really cute when I finally saw one, a chubby shiny black body with teeny weeny legs, completely out of proportion like most babies are. Anyway, remember that scene in Charlottes Web with all her babies flying away on webby parachutes saying "Goodbye, goodbye!" That's what these little dudes were doing. And evidently I was downwind from their nest.

I have a strange history with spiders. Once a spider was on me at the Grunt and I freaked and smacked it off and demanded my friend Elaine kill it. She refused and began to carefully escort it out of the opening, following it's slow spider progress. Finally she gave up and got it on an invite and dropped it outside. She was lauded for her compassion towards arachnids and I felt like an attempted murderer.

Currently we have three orb spiders living in our backyard, the most celebrated one being the ingenious tan spider who built her web over the sunporch light fixture. As you can imagine, she's living pretty large. We've had to save her from visitors numerous times. My cousin wanted to kill her by spraying her down with Pledge, but I pointed out that it would only polish her and make her nice and shiny. Since then she's resigned herself to hurling verbal abuse at the spider, whom she has named The Bitch.

Ever since today's fiasco with the spiderlings, I've grown concerned about The Bitch and her potential offspring. Certainly she must have had suitors this summer considering the explosion of orb spiders in Saskatchewan. And the sunporch is completely encased in glass and screens. So this weekend, to save the babies, and our sunporch, and our sanity, we have to construct some kind of mosquito netting holding pen for the orb spiderlings, while still taking care to ensure that she can have her food flying to the web. It's going to be tricky.

And finally a Public Spider Announcement. This is your web:



This is your web on caffeine:



Any questions?