Gotye – Hearts A Mess
for
(Not so) Favourite Spider – Huntsman on My Window
Actual size
As I write this, that spider up there and I have been having a staring contest for about an hour. Or, to be more precise, its been winning consistently for about an hour, because I keep looking away. And it hasn’t even blinked one of its eight eyes.
It dashed up into my line of sight and sent me flying out of my chair, heart in mouth, while I tried to determine just exactly which side of the glass it was on and, and then just sat there, dead still. Looking at me. We have this little thing going on – it looks like it’s waiting for me to do something, and I’m definitely waiting for it to do something. So we sit and wait until we’re comfortable enough with each other to do something more.
24 Hours Later…
I’m almost at ease with the distant presence of this spider; which is a little strange because it seems like it’s eliciting the slowest, most obvious stalk ever. It creeps to various vantage points on the window intermittently, as though it’s performing a calm, gratuitous moving along with a sideways glance so as to appear inconspicuous, then stops to continue peeping through my window. It reminds me of those cartoon spies who follow their targets with newspapers at the ready, ducking behind them should their object of pursuit get suspicious and turn around. I almost expect to hear a soft, casual whistle while the spider moves to its next spot, all eight eyes looking anywhere but at me.
Spiders most definitely are not a favourite thing of mine, at least not on the traditional sense. I probably fear them (irrationally, for the most part) just as much as I admire them. The golden wheel spider is incredibly cool, but even the ones that can’t cartwheel down sand dunes at the (relative) equivalent of 300km per hour do some amazing, fascinating things. Maybe soon I’ll work up the courage to have a little conversation and ask this one if there’s anything in the world it finds amazing. Or if it really is more scared of me than I am of it.
Fear, of course, is quite often not about probabilities (of which logic plays a major role), but possibilities (of which logic can at times play no part at all). Knowing that something isn’t very likely to hurt you isn’t always enough to make you feel safe to get close enough and give it the opportunity. Believing that I have greater capacity to hurt this spider than it does me, does nothing to take away the possibility that it could.
I’m ok with this spider being on the other side of my window, waiting for whatever it’s waiting for, being amazed at whatever it finds amazing, with its distance ensured by an impenetrable shield of glass. But I wonder how happy it would be to stay that close to me if it had just the tiniest inkling what I would be capable of if it managed to find a way inside. Perhaps it does know, perhaps it’s sitting there being amazed – or amused – at the idea this other creature in the world would turn from mildly curious observer to panicking predator if it was 5 milimetres closer.
On that note, the theme song for the huntsman on my window is Gotye‘s Hearts A Mess – chosen in part for the rather apt and very cool film clip, but mostly for all the other things it unwittingly made me think about.
S4E
Satellite For Entropy 
December 29th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
one of the reasons i am glad i live in scotland. i am in no way scared of spiders, or snakes or sharks, or any of those creatures that you have in your world. that said, that’s probably cause scottish spiders are mainly small, scottish snakes live where nobody can find them, and nobody goes in the sea in scotland. i wonder if my lack of fear would be different coming face to face with one of those bad boys in your picture…i think the answer is a massive probably!
December 29th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Believe it or not, that little guy is actually a baby – camping once out in the country, I came face to face with what is known in general terms as a bird-eating spider, which was literally bigger than my face! That was about the most paralysis-inducing fear I’ve ever experienced (age 11), so its cousins like this little huntsman suffer the legacy of those few minutes. Despite being older and (presumably) wiser, I still have that “panic first, think rationally later – when it’s no longer relevant” instinct. Scotland sounds ideal !
December 30th, 2010 at 12:21 am
yeah. scotland is ideal in terms of deadly wildlife. i can’t think of any animals that are all that deadly in fact. and if they are deadly, they do a good job of hiding away from humans.
it’s funny though, cause people here are still terrified of tiny little spiders. things that can do no harm whatsoever.
December 30th, 2010 at 3:35 am
Spiders get a pretty bad rap, really. They’ve been associated with all sorts of sinister things for so long I guess maybe it’s hard separating them from all that. Technically the huntsman such as the one visiting me can’t do any real harm, apart from a relatively painful but non-toxic bite (unlike several other varieties we have here which are pretty deadly).
Unless you count all the silly, irrational fears having one stare at you continually brings to the surface as harm – Personally, I think that’s debatable. I can sleep pretty easy with some types of spiders in very near proximity, but one like that, well I have been known to chase less fierce-looking creatures around my room with the vacuum cleaner….
January 1st, 2011 at 5:21 pm
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