arachnophilia

When you live in the woods, like we do, you have to make peace with the bugs. There are lots of them, all the time, especially spiders, especially in the Spring and Summer, and they might consider your house theirs for a time.

If I find one that I'd rather not have crawling around, I usually escort it outside with a cup over it and a piece of paper underneath. Fair enough. You can live, just not in my bathroom. Or my bedroom. Or in my laundry basket.

Spiders can't help being creepy, but it's not the legs or the little hairs or the antennae that I have a problem with, it's their shady demeanor. It's the sneakiness and the lurking in dark corners. That's just rude.

I say give me a good old Daddy Long-Legs. Any spider willing to install itself on a windowsill, hold itself up to the light and boldly stake its claim earns the right to stay. For a while. They get big points for honesty, and anything that eats mosquitoes and fruit flies is a friend to me. Last Summer one lived in my kitchen window long enough that I named him and fed him by shooing flies into his web as I washed dishes (RIP, Simon).

Yes, Spring is the season for cobwebs at Chez Jones. I've changed my dusting habits (?) and learned to appreciate the three-dimensional lace doilies that have taken shape. Even if you haven't seen Charlotte's Web two hundred times, you'd have to feel somewhat guilty for just swiffing away such hard work. Plus, they give any home a genuine rustic feel, and they're way more sightly than those nasty dust-and-insect-carcass dreadlocks that are left hanging around after you try to clean them.

I mean, who dusts? Not me, I live in the woods.