Saturday, February 27, 2010

Driving With a Spider

Hairy Brown SpiderLast week I attended an evening event at Leah's school, and parked next to a bushy tree. During the event a spider constructed a rather elaborate web between my car and the tree. As I returned to the driver's seat, I passed through the web, which I didn't see because it was dark, but could definitely feel, as some of the threads were very strong. Apparently this was when the spider hitched a ride on me, and moved into my car.

During the week, whenever I went out in my car, I would find quite strong and elaborate webs between the steering wheel, my seat, the roof, the sun visor, etc. In fact, that spider was quite productive and made thick, strong threads throughout the car, particularly around the driver's area. I didn't see it though. Somewhat annoying given that I had just thoroughly cleaned the interior of the car a couple of weeks ago.

Yesterday noon I had to go out on an errand. As I sat down in the driver's seat, I noticed more threads from the wheel up to the visor, and there it was, sitting on the visor. It was brown with a white stripe down his back, very hairy, had a leg-span of about 2.5"/6cm, and a body of about 2cm. I'm not exaggerating (the photo above is of the deceased and deflated creature, with his legs tucked in), and I was quite startled to see it inches above my face. I jumped out of the car.

I felt that the spider on the visor (or dropping down to the steering wheel) might be a bit of a distraction to me while driving.

I decided to encourage it to leave, so I got the Toyota service log out of the glovebox, and used it to try to move the spider. The spider didn't really want to cooperate. So after a few minutes, and with my departure deadline approaching, I had to swat it. With lots of spider guts on the carpet and log book later, the terrible deed was done. I swept it out onto the roadway and left.

It was still there when I returned, so I took the photo above. I did manipulate the image to highlight the area around the spider, but I didn't change the size or anything like that. Note that this is after it was swatted, so it's volume is much smaller, and it's legs are tucked in.

I'm glad that we didn't meet while driving, but a bit sad it had to die.

1 comment:

  1. One time when I lived in Reading UK, I turned east onto the M4, accelerated to 70mph, and lowered the visor to block out the morning sun (its annual appearance). Sadly for me (and the spider about to enter the story), a spider dropped from the visor into my crotchal area where (coming as I do from a land in which many spiders are lethal) I immediately and frenziedly pummelled it, my crotch, and the car seat for the next 30 seconds just to be on the safe side. I'm sure the two kids I now have are grateful for my swift action.

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