The Trouble with Hairy (Legs)

I have a problem with spiders. Every morning and every evening I have to kill a bunch of spider webs on my front porch and on the tiki deck. It does not matter how diligent I am at removing them - they keep coming back. The problem is worse when I leave the porch lights on at night.

I picture a crew of spider construction workers with their little hard hats, the flashing sawhorse lights, the beep-beep-beep as they back their little spider asses to the next area to be filled in, spewing webbing as a cement truck would a load of concrete. Only a third of them are working. The rest are either "supervising" or "taking a break", leaning on little spider shovels and glaring at passing fireflies.

Personally I find spiders creepy. When I was a teen-ager I moved my bedroom to my parent's back basement to avoid sharing a room with my siblings. I had a cot in one corner, poor ventilation and nascent claustrophobia. One night I awoke in the dark. I was thirsty and I reached above me and pulled the string that turned on the bare bulb over my bed. Hanging parallel to the pull string was a single strand of spider webbing. Suspended by the webbing was a big hairy spider - about six inches from my face. After that I didn't find sleeping in the same room with my sister nearly as disturbing.

Yesterday, I was killing another batch of spider webs when the petite red head asked me if I ever killed the actual spiders. "Huh?" I replied sagely.

It had never occurred to me. I just kept killing more and more elaborate constructions. Then I got to thinking. I wondered how many generations of spiders grew up and were evolving through selective breeding to survive my daily attacks. Was I actually breeding a heartier form of super-spider? Would I awake one morning to find myself wrapped in a cocoon of webbing, suspended upside down from the ceiling? With thousands of chittering arachnids fighting over the remains of my neighbor and claiming "dibs" on me?

I believe that a lot of nature is put here as an example of how "The Big Guy" intends things to run. Spiders are indeed creepy. But they also serve a function. Eating bugs and scaring teen-age boys in the dark are two of them. They also give me something to do twice a day. Sort of a break from the routines of living in paradise.

As for selective breeding, I got to wondering if we weren't doing the same thing with our fellow human beings. You know, breeding a stronger, smarter, more virulent form of, say, terrorists - or maybe even ex-spouses? It is damn near Darwinian.

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