The Little Spider

It was just one of a hundred thousand species. A common appearing little brown spider. She was not from around here. It seems she caught a ride on Annie’s brother’s backpack, while he was in Costa Rica, exploring the dark and mysterious mountain rain forests.

Once all the bustling and hustling was finally over, the little spider decided at night to go about and view her strange new kingdom. Leaving the area of Annie’s brother’s room, and hating the odd musty smells of his clothes and possessions, she sought nicer, sweeter, quieter and *warmer* domains.

Off down the hall, ignoring the vast forest of strange carpet, she fearfully hugged the small space between the carpet and the baseboards. Soon she became aware of scents which reminded her of her lost home, of orchids and sweet flowers. She crept unseen under the closed door and into the small room where such wonderful fragrances existed.

After reconnoitering the better part of the room, with its fascinating closet, dressers and crannies, she moved to the source of all that sweet smellingness. It was the bed of the sister of the brother who had brought her into this new and unknown world. A world that was decidedly colder than she was used to. However, in that bed, all fragrant and soft, was a very warm body, and soon the spider was content. Supremely content, within a warm and safe place, and so she slept. For after all, she was very tired from the strangeness of it all.

Many species of spider are very hairy creatures, and they have tiny sets of multiple eyes, shiny black and beady, for zeroing in on their prey, like ultra-modern military sensors. However, most spiders are completely deaf, and they rely on many those thousands of leg hairs to tell them of all the vibrations around them. Of course, we humans fear them, not so much for these things, but for their venom. This is not at all an irrational fear, considering all the tales we hear about these tiny, eight-legged nightmare creatures and their bite.

A spider, however, is a complete creature. It has all it needs to make its own home, with its amazing and microscopic spinnerets at the end of its abdomen, where it takes incredibly small amounts of its own body fluids and spins them into ultra-strong silk, just a few molecules in diameter. With these silk spinning orifices, and her eight slender legs, she can spin a cocoon-like cave for herself in just a few seconds.

And so she did, our tiny brown spider, almost in her sleep. Such a silk pocket is very soft, and it was soon completely dry and stiff, being firmly attached to the many small body hairs within the chamber she was hiding in. And so she dozed, warm and content. She was full to the very reaches of her tiny spidery soul, with the very best kinds of spider dreams.

Annie awoke to her alarm clock, and soon was busy with her preparations of the day, showering and dressing, running down the stair and out the door. Her school day was full of friends and gossip, bothering teachers, and short, planned surmountable trials and ordeals, such are as common to all students under our educational system.

Annie, like so many of us, will rarely pay attention to their own body in all of this busy living. Unless something is suddenly completely wrong and out of place, or unless we become ill at ease and full of sudden pain, we rarely think about our bodies at all. We are too busy with our busy lives to notice anything very small, such as a well hidden tenant, who is trying hard to be very quiet and still.

And so, it was a few days before Annie even became aware of her boarder at all. The tiny and very rare brown spider began to grow within her snug and happy cave. She moved around not at all, except at night, as her hunger drove her to look for other small and unnoticed creatures, which live everywhere around Man. Snagging a single mite or a midge outside the fragrant hairy forest beyond her den was all our tiny spider needed for a snack. Soon she was safely and quietly entrenched within her snug cocoon once more, and so she slept and dreamed.

Annie first noticed that something was odd when she felt a very small dizziness upon standing up. She was also a little hard of hearing too, but that was nothing of notice to her, since she had always played her music recordings much too loud. Her hearing was like anyone else of her young generation, so a bit of ringing in the ears and a small amount of deafness was common, and so it went unnoticed, as did her little dizziness.

Even when Annie showered in the morning, like all of us, there are still places in our bodies that remain relatively dry. Water does not penetrate everywhere. But even if it did, it would not have concerned our little brown spider. Her former home was sometimes wet with occasional heavy rains, so Annie’s showers did not bother her very much inside her dry and airy cocoon.

But night by night, as Annie slept, the little brown spider was growing from her nightly jaunts and feastings. During the fifth day, Annie became aware of a hard mass in her left ear. Thinking it was some ear wax, she did what so many of us do and reached for a cue-tip. Poking the cotton tipped stick into her ear only served to drive whatever wax that was there deeper into her ear canal. The tip of it never reached our little brown spider, nor caught the front of the sticky cocoon. If it had, the whole cocoon, spider and all, might have popped out of Annie’s ear and been sent down the drain without a second look, or a second thought.

So the spider stayed. And the spider grew some more. By the tenth day, Annie was noticing her problem more and more. Using her little finger, she continually tried to extricate this mass of wax from her ear. Finally, she went to the school nurse, who was a kindly elderly woman and very efficient with her duties. A rubber syringe was produced, and a beaker of distilled water, and Annie was bent over a sink while the nurse irrigated her ear canal.

All of this was to no avail. By now, the enlarged cocoon was very well anchored in the many hairs that line the ear canal, and so the cocoon, the spider, and its secret remained in Annie’s ear. But Annie did feel better, and thought her ear was clear. The reason was our little brown spider, who, alarmed at the sudden flood, and in her fright, exuded some of her precious venom, which the water spread throughout the cocoon. Soon that tiny amount of venom was leaking into Annie’s ear canal, and although it wasn’t a lethal amount, it was enough to numb the inside of her ear completely.

Another day went by. A second, also. By the third day, Annie’s mother was taking her to their family doctor for a look-see. Annie’s doctor was very thorough. He immediately noticed that in the back of her ear canal, surrounded by ear wax, was a white thing. Thinking that her ear was infected, he assumed that the whiteness in the ear wax was puss. It would never do for dear little Annie to have an impacted ear. She might get sick, or lose her hearing. So he reached for his handy, sterile forceps, which were small stainless steel prongs, something like over large tweezers.

Soon, amid the rising screams and commotion of panic and fear, our little brown spider, cocoon and all, was lying in plain sight on the stark white cloth of the tray next to the bench where Annie was sitting.

Shyly, the little spider slowly peeked out of her former home, one long hairy leg at a time, and the three people surrounding her were transfixed in utter horror at how big she was, once she stood up, and raised her forelegs to them in greeting.

Any other doctor, or man, would have dispatched our little brown spider forthwith, squished in a tissue, or under a boot, and then right down the toilet, or into the latched and securely covered medical trash can.

But Annie’s doctor was a ‘bug-ologist,’ you see, so he carefully placed the spider and cocoon into a zip-locked baggie, inflated with air, to be later placed into a secure terrarium at his house, for observation and study. Our spider was very rare indeed, and the good doctor had never seen this particular species before. Nor did he realize just exactly in what special way our little brown spider was different.

Annie and her mom sped home, trying to put the strange ordeal behind them, and completely skirting the topic in their conversations. It was over and soon forgotten, as a bad dream. Annie, for a few weeks, would syringe her ear out every morning, with a store bought rubber bulb. But, with nothing else amiss, she soon got over it, and forgetting the whole event, returned to her normal routine and her busy young life.

But unknown to Annie, or to her mother, or to her family doctor, our little brown /parthogenic/ spider, one of the world’s most venomous and lethal spiders, had the final say in all of this.

Annie’s ordeal is far from over. And perhaps, neither is your own soon-to-begin ordeal. In retrospect, it would have been far kinder if the little spider had fatally bitten Annie. It would have spared her the nightmares to come.

For before she was so rudely forced to vacate it, quite all by herself, the little brown spider had faithfully and carefully laid a few hundred fertile, microscopic eggs, deep under the fleshy floor of her warm, damp chamber.

Tell me, do your ears ever itch?

Pleasant dreams, – and happy Fright Night!