Do Spiders Hear Human Apologies?

I had just struck a match to light the candle on my bedside table in preparation for a relaxing evening with a book by Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The bedroom was pleasantly dim, and shadows played their usual harmless tricks as I lowered the dancing flame down to the wick. But the shadow in the candle did not flee from the light. The light had angered it.

The specter extended its legs and enveloped the glass with its dark matter. The match was snuffed out as I hastily jumped back and ran to switch on the ceiling light. The creature hoisted up its armored torso, its gangly gray legs unfolding and rearranging to engage in warfare at any moment. It was the largest house spider I had ever seen, and it loomed large and discordant in the sizable pink candle. While I have always appreciated the symbiotic relationship between humans and spiders, they sometimes pose an inconvenience and thus are removed humanely by the old in the glass - out the window method. This tactic would surely fail, as I feared this fella would outrun the glass and disappear into a crevice in the bedroom. I would then lie awake all night anticipating some arachnoid reprisal if I dared shut my eyes.

I admired it with disgusted wonder from a safe distance. Several legs tapped softly against the glass as it readjusted its position. I wondered if it was looking at me right now. How old it was. Where did it live. If it ever made spider babies. If it had poisonous fangs. If it had ever crawled over my face in the darkness while I slept. I quivered at the appalling thought and looked at the Kundera book on the bed. An alternate title came to mind: “The Unbearable Heaviness of Unsettling Thoughts.” And then a vacuum flashed in my mind.

I held the hose tightly with both hands and aimed. I told the spider out loud that I was sorry (I wondered if it could hear me) as I clicked the ON button with my foot. It tried to hold onto to the glass for a few seconds, to no avail. Its armored body sounded like a wayward rock as rolled up through the tube. Now, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel bad. I did. But I would have felt a lot worse if it had manifested itself anywhere on my body at any time. I like to tell myself that it survived and crawled out of the vacuum, dazed but unscathed, just to find itself in the closet. And maybe in that back of that closet it found a magnificent dark hole to crawl into and start a new spider journey. Or maybe it’s holed up behind the toolbox or window cleaning fluid, patiently waiting to exact its revenge on the foolish human who dared to remove it so unceremoniously from the lovely strawberry-scented candle it had staked claim to.

The unbearable heaviness of unsettling thoughts, indeed.