Spiders on my keyboard

Talk about being at the right place at the right time. Three tiny arachnids showed up within minutes of each other just as I was sitting down to write a piece on the hacklemesh spider that also walked into my life.

My wife, Sue, doesn't come into my office unless she really has to, because I will not destroy spider webs on my windows, walls, floor and ceiling. Not that she's afraid of spiders; she's not, but she's not a happy camper because I won't go along with "dusting" and other household chores that destroy spider webs in my sanctum.

She goes along with my lifestyle because she knows I'm curious about what spiders will take up residence in our home, above the crawl space beneath our double-wide shaky-shanty.

You see, there are black widows under my (and your) house, quite a few of them. They find plenty to eat to keep them down there with all the invertebrates that occupy that cool, damp space. Plus, black widows would rather live in the dark than sunlight. (I once found a long-dead, white-footed mouse sucked dry and suspended in a black-widow snare under the house).

My theory has always been that if we leave the spiders alone above the floorboards, they will eat all the small critters that would - if food became scarce below decks - cause the black widows to come up into the human living space looking for a place to make a living.

Which reminds me of another spider story: Back in the mid-1960s I met a most wonderful man by the name of Ross Nicholas in Portland. I was working for OMSI at the time and Ross had boxes of birds' eggs and bird study skins he wanted to get out of his house. Having no family, he was going out to a nursing home to cash it in.

He had collected the eggs and birds with William L. Finley and Herman T. Bohlman around 1906, and also had several of Bohlman's beautiful old bird photos. During our delightful conversation about his adventures with Finley and Bohlman he so thrilled my wife and I that we named our No. 2 son Ross. He also mentioned he was a founder of the Multnomah Athletic Club and built canoes for hauling freight around Cascade Locks.

In the telling of that adventure he said he had some of his homemade paddles in his basement, and if I wanted them, we could go down and get them. But when we opened the outside cellar doors, I heard black-widow webs crackling as they were pulled up.

The door to the basement also crackled as Ross tugged it open, and as he started into the dark basement probing ahead by waving his hands for the pull chain on the ancient light hanging from the ceiling, I could see all too many black-widows' egg sacks hanging in the silk webbing. Without hesitation he plowed right into them, crashing through the webbing and sending spiders and egg sacks flying in all directions.

It gave me the creeps watching him thrashing around in that crackling webbing. Ultimately black widows were crawling all over us and I said, very loudly: "Ross! Do you know what these spiders are?"

"Sure," he mumbled, pulling on the string that clicked the 40-watt bulb on, "they're black widows; they've been living down here ever since my sister and I moved in 50 years ago. They're happy down here and don't bother me and I don't bother them."

At that, he arrived near the furnace, where three beautifully hand-carved canoe paddles were stacked against the coal bin. "Here," he said, wiping black widow spiders, silk, and egg sacks off the paddles. What a guy!

So, back to the now...

Why all those tiny spiders came wandering through my "office" while I was writing the piece on the hacklemesh I have no idea. I hope it was just coincidence, but you just never know. The strange part of this is that even though they were all very tiny, they were all adults.

I had to do some serious searching to find the silken orb web of the tiny Charlotte, and found it hidden just above the top of the north-facing window, no bigger than a saucer, perfect in every detail, complete with a sucked-dry housefly.

The jumper and the cellar spiders do not spin a web, so just their presence on my keyboard was a lovely surprise. The cellar spider was a female, but the jumper is a full adult male. His pedipalps (mating devices, aka "boxing gloves") are below the spider's huge main eyes, located between his first pair of legs, and testify of his being an adult male.

So, with these thoughts in mind, may I suggest your life will be a lot more fun if you take the time to see and enjoy those tiny spiders that may occupy your home and office. It just makes life that much more enjoyable. Well, I think so...