webcast: 8.5.04

Things you probably shouldn�t know about me include the fact that I live in a basement apartment, alone, with the puss. Oh, and there are spiders in my bathroom. Creepy much? Now, the apartment is actually pretty nice (why yes, there IS a lot of light for a basement), it�s just that the bathroom windows are level with a flower garden. This allows me supreme vantage points from which to watch plant growth (which is a little fascinating) and, in the summer when I open the window, the opportunity to host many teensy visitors who somehow wiggle in. With the exception of cockyroaches, the insect kingdom is fine by me. I would coexist with it quite nicely at home, were it not for the possibility of their pushy ambassadors joining me in bed at night. Or in the kitchen. Or on le futon for perfunctory viewing of the next (taped, of course) episode of Ali G�Actually, the only place that I feel fine about my little friends is in the bathroom. I guess it�s kind of nice to have company in there. Not that I haven�t done my part in staging devastating attacks on erstwhile parading ants, but somehow my impulse toward insecticide stops with them. Intervening in the puss�s favorite sport, I swoop across the tiled killing fields to gently relocate beetles to the back garden and politely escort crickets out the front door.

Of note, neither the puss or I ever touch the spiders. The spides are a good thing, I like to think, because who knows what the guest list in the bathroom would look like without them. I like to keep one or two on hand, discreetly behind the toilet, just for crowd control. But lately the place has turned positively arachnifabulous. This morning, I was surveying their little sub-division next to the window and the happy ghetto that has sprung up in the corner under the sink, thinking it was a shame to have to disrupt their busy, productive lives (I have respect for industry, I do) and which ones should get their eviction notices. Because my mental age is that of the average 5th grader, I was soon swept into a reverie of Charlotte�s Web and my favorite illustration of Wilbur ogling Charlotte and her rather hefty egg-sack (ew), and wondering if perhaps some of these spiders were indeed the offspring of the others. I peered at them closely, but any family resemblance eluded me. So, I took a piece of cardboard and executed Operation Itsy Bitsy Freedom, leaving only the original spider behind the toilet. He might put on some weight with all that competition gone.