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The Newsletter >
Spider Fights
September 8, 2009
“Nice hat,” I told five-year old Zoe when she arrived at my house. She walked through my garage, looking jaunty in giant pink plastic earrings and necklace, elbow length pink opera gloves, and a pink ball cap with glitter stripes.
“I don’t want the spiders to fall on my head,” Zoe replied matter-of-factly, adjusting the My-Little-Pony purse on her shoulder and pulling her hat down over her ears.
I looked up. Spider webs, their keepers busily spinning, weaving, and repairing, formed a crisscross pattern of spider lace over our heads, a canopy of creepy crawler hammocks filled with desiccated bodies that stretched across the garage ceiling in ever more complicated and convoluted territorial boundaries. Okay, okay, sorry . . . bottom line . . . there are a lot of spiders in my garage.
“Hey! Do you see what’s in those spider webs?”
Three-year old, Conner, joining the party, squinted at the nearest spider herd and said, “Skee-toes.”
“That’s right, skee-toes; Ugh, I mean mosquitoes. Exactly.” Zoe adjusted her hat so that it tipped rakishly over her right eye.
I said, “Children, YaYa’s spiders are keeping us from being carried away by skee-toes; I mean mosquitoes; I mean blood suckers.”
They both frowned.
Eyes narrowing, Zoe asked, “Do spiders suck blood?”
“Yes, I mean . . . no, not our blood . . . bug blood, oh forget it; come in and get a cookie.”
Sitting at the dining room table, cookie crumbs trailing across the surface, Conner looked up at my dining room light fixture, a faux antique deal, complete with fake cracks, a crackle finish, and a pesky filigree of tiny spider webs that resist my every attempt at spider eradication.
“YaYa?” Conner asked.
“Yes.”
“You like Haunted Mansion Disney?” He flashed his dimples.
“Hey, funny boy, have another cookie.”
FYI - I’ve become the little, old lady that lives in the spooky house filled with spiders and haunted light fixtures, so, my new motto is: “Spiders is good. They eats the cockroaches.” (from Fletch Lives)
Linda (Skeeter) Zern
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