Wilbur To Her Charlotte, Gollum To Her Shelob
I have high wide windows, maybe 1.5 square meters of big air, with a large fan blowing out one side and fresh air flowing in the other.
A couple of months ago, an ordinary garden spider found her way in (I say ‘her’; I’m lonely). She established herself on my ceiling fan light fixture, anchored between the fixture itself and the long, dangling, on/off pull-string. She started small and kept getting bigger.
I let her stay for two main reasons. First of all, if she heard somebody was going to try and kill me, she’d warn me; “Some Pig”. That would be cool. Yes, I know that’s not what Charlotte meant by that message, but that’s how I’d take it, believe you me.
Secondly, I noticed that sometimes she withdrew up into the light fixture and the web would get all tattered. I thought she’d died. I actually don’t get a lot of bugs in my place, even with the wide open windows. But she came back bigger and better. That’s happened a couple of times. Now the web is bigger than my outstretched hand and she’s big and lovely.
Now yesterday, I noticed her looking a little thin and peaked and I got worried. After all, she’s probably late middle-aged for a spider and a little hungry.
Later I noticed there was a dying beetle on the hallway floor inside the back door. I grabbed some tweezers, snagged the beetle, took it inside and dropped it into the web. Well, she was on it so fast I barely saw her move, even though I was expecting it. Cool. It was almost as big as she is and she went wild wrapping it up and then dragging it up to the centre of the web to, I assume, dine.
Then I sat at my computer, watching her, thinking “Enjoy, my arachnid beauty!”
Then I glimpsed my copy of ‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ and thought, ‘Jesus Christ! Tolkien must have had a pet spider!’
Then I looked around at my little room and thought, ‘A Elbereth Gilthoniel, Barker! You’re Gollum!’
I am.