Last week, I noticed some shadows on the outside of one of my beehives as I prepared to do a check on the health of the hive. Being nearsighted and needing reading glasses to see small things, I leaned in closer to study. There was a huge orange blob that as I got close, I soon realized was what I’ll call a GINORMOUS spider. Now, normally, I’m pro-spider. I leave them in peace. If I find one in the house, I’ll scoop it up and send it back into the great outdoors. But as I studied this one, she appeared to have already encased six or more of my bees into her web, liquefying them for a future meal. Since my bees take priority, I knocked her off the hive with one, FWAP, and then stepped in the general vicinity where she had landed. I didn’t study the area to make sure I killed her, because I felt a little guilty at picking the life of one insect over another.
A couple of days later, I gathered up my supplies to feed the chickens. A little bit of pellets that are good for laying hens, and a cup full of dried meal worms to give the chickens a little protein. One of my daughters once asked me why I tended to save insects around the house, but also bought a huge back of meal worms every month or so. I tried to explain that the meal worms were raised by some farmer for this purpose and if we didn’t buy the meal worms, there wouldn’t be that many meal worms in the world. She gave me the ‘don’t jerk my chain’ look that told me that she wasn’t fooled by my hypocrisy.
As I headed to the back door, I noticed that my usual farm shoes were still soaking wet from the rainy day before, so I slipped on another pair of old running shoes shoved in the corner. It’s not far to the chicken coop, but by the time, I made it to the gate, I was limping. A briar in the toe of my shoe had stabbed me at least twice and I was scrunching up my toes to avoid it.
As I got to the chicken coop, I decided that it wasn’t worth the pain. I let the chickens out to wander, and I pulled off my shoe. Not wanting to jab my finger with the briar, I shook the shoe to see if it would fall out. It wasn’t a briar. A medium-sized grayish-brown spider came bouncing into the heel of my shoe. I said some choice words and then shook the spider into the path of my chickens. And what did my chickens do? Stepped right past it to get to the cup full of mealworms. The spider (a wolf spider as Google will reveal in my later research) scurried into the grass and disappeared. I said some more choice words.
(Photo by Lola Clinton)
Luckily, the spider was not poisonous. My toes hurt, then itched, then went numb. I admit that for a few seconds, I thought, oh great, after getting fussed at for hiking alone all over this mountain, am I really going to die just 100 feet from my house while the chickens walk all over me?
Twenty minutes later, I couldn’t tell which toe had been bitten, and the chickens were back in their coop and hunting for more mealworms. In the war against spiders, I think I’m still in the win column.
From Creek to River 