there's no i in spder

usually i can't tell spiders apart, like it is hard to positively identify them as individuals, but one came in my CSA share and i sort of developed a fondness for him because he had only five legs. four on one side and one on the other. so i brought him out to the compost bin because there are all these flies that live in there and spiders like flies as far as i know and i thought maybe i could help him out a little, because he was disadvantaged in the leg department.

but so a couple days later i was in the shower and who should appear on the wall above the tile, but the one spider in the world that i can positively identify. now how or why he made the trek 30 ft. from my compost bin to my bathroom is something that i can't begin to understand, but there he was, in the flesh (wait, do spiders have flesh?). i figured that he must have made that journey for a reason though, so i decided to let him be. but as i was showering he started repelling down a strand of whatever a spider's strand is made of, towards the tub and perilously close to the reflected spray of the shower and the river of water headed for the drain. now i know he didn't want to go down there, because there is no way he knew what terrible fate awaited him in the sewage system so i put my hand in his path and he climbed aboard and i placed him on the windowsill, above the tub. he was a little startled by this turn of events and he just sat there, trying to figure out how his scenery had been so rapidly altered. 

anyway, next morning i got in the shower and there he was, mister five-legs, waiting for me above the tiles. i turned on the water and hopped in the tub and we reenacted the same series of events as the day before. next day, same thing. so i was not surprised by my arachnid-accompaniment on the fourth day when i climbed into the shower and i was equally unsurprised when the steam animated him and he started wandering about.

now it is impossible to say what was driving that creature towards the stream of water tumbling down the drain and, if he wanted to be down there so badly, why he didn't just go investigate some time when i was not in the shower. but on the fourth day he either repelled faster or just leapt without bothering to secure his strand, or maybe i just wasn't really paying attention, but i noticed the blank spot on the wall where he had been hanging out and looked down in time to see him circle the drain once before succumbing to the whirlpool of wastewater.

it was sad to see him go, but his persistence paid off in the end and i'm sorry if that makes you sad. i have a hard time allotting too many emotions for creatures as small and transient as spiders, but i felt a tinge of sadness as i watched him disappear. 

and r.w. emerson said "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" and i'd add that sometimes we don't really want what we think we do.

(and i'm sorry for assigning a gender to the spider, but it made him a more sympathetic character and i don't really know how to ascertain a spider's gender anyway, so lay off. and it is too late now.)