Spider Babies

I have made an online, blogger friend through this site, and like to check out Chad's photos taken way over in Japan. He has a tendency to look up a lot (even though I have seen photos of his feet as well) and has taken incredible photos of the sky in different forms and trees in a plethora of hues. Today when I was looking at his sight, I let out a shudder that immediately sent me back to nine years ago, when I came upon his photo of a spider silhouette.

The story I am about to tell you is completely true and one of my favourite stories to tell my students to totally gross them out. This story has absolutely nothing to do with Christmas and won't drive you to the Kleenex box.

It was the early summer of 2000 and I was well into my second trimester of pregnancy. Thanks to my Polish and Ukrainian genetics, I was not one of those cute little basketball belly pregnancies that I see so many ladies fashionably and luckily carry. (Maternity clothes was made for these ladies....not me.)I was the full, spread hips, big ol' Mama-boobs pregnant lady and probably started retaining water hours after conception. Needless to say, I spent a lot of time in summer dresses and soaking my feet in a kiddie pool.

As you may know, I am also a gardener, and really prided myself on the lima bean shaped rock garden that I had created a couple of summers before. It was full of fresh green veggies that would soon create prolific amounts of yumminess. Because of my cumbersome belly, I had a tendency to walk through the aisles of my garden on my hands and knees, weeding along the way. I found out soon after that this was a big mistake. I was close to the rocks, and rocks (along with other dark, cool, moist places) are wonderful places for brown recluse spiders to hide. By the time I noticed I was bit by one, I had the typical round, red ring around the back of my calf. It is interesting to note, I did not feel the bite. It was not until probably that evening or the next day that it was noticed. So, I monitored it for a couple of days, and then the bite started to get a bit bigger and a little itchy. I figured I might want to go to the doctor.

You may be reading this right now saying, Jesus! I'd have been in that hospital immediately!!! But please note that I live in a small remote community that is pretty low on doctors, and so we tend to take our health into our own hands a lot. The doctors we do have are absolutely spent from working the incredible hours that they do, dealing with every facet of medicine and health. The overall mentality around here is, if it's not that bad, then let it be. Take an ibuprofen. Rest for a day. Check it out on the internet (or not). We have a bit of a survivalist mentality in this neck of the woods. But I was pregnant and a bit worried. I started thinking, what if there is spider poison in my leg? What if I'm poisoning my little baby? So, up I went to the doctor and he confirmed that I definitely had a spider bite. Now what? Well, because I was pregnant he really couldn't give me any heavy duty antibiotic (the bite had a weird bacteria on it called acinetobacter which is usually connected to hospital environments!!!) As if that wasn't creepy enough. When the doctor told me that, I demanded that he just cut the whole chunk out of my leg and be done with it. I was willing to do that, but he didn't feel the need to be so extreme. Sometimes I have been known to be a little extreme. Ahem.....

So I went back home and noticed that my bite was starting to protrude with a bump, and continued to do so for about a week. Things were getting freaky.  I went back to the doctor demanding to get this bite cut out of my leg again, and he continued to tell me to just "monitor" the bite. Monitor my ass, buddy. (Well, I never said that, but I sure wanted to.) So, I sat down in my bathroom, and did what any pregnant, slightly insane woman would do. I squeezed it. Yep, just like a big ol' pimple. I squeezed the bite, and out popped a small white pearl sized ball. Holy shit. What the hell is that? I took a pin to it and inside this ball/pod was what looked like thousands of tiny little white eggs. My freakin' leg was full of spider eggs.

I was not just pregnant with one; at this point in my life, I was pregnant with thousands.

After I had a complete wiggy and did the freaky coo-coo dance all over my bathroom and screamed bloody murder, I flushed the egg(s) and it's creepy little pod down the toilet and got on with my life. To this day, I still have a little divot in the back of my leg, and it's still sensitive to the touch. Every time I see a spider walking around carrying their sack of eggs on their back, I have a mixture of feelings. In a strange way, it takes me back to my days of being pregnant and regardless of how bulbous I was, it was still beautiful to have my little baby growing inside of me. And I feel for the poor spider mama who unknowingly lost her thousands of babies. How the hell those eggs got in there in the first place, I'll never know. It seems like a science fiction story. So, I don't squash spiders, even if I really despise them. And I feel nervous when I put on a pair of boots that have been in storage all winter (one of their favourite places to "sleep") and shake the crap out of them before I put them on. Oh, and don't bother buying me a pair of work or garden gloves. I won't wear them because they're practically spider houses.

As a side story, a few summers ago, my mother and son and I were driving down the 105 very early in the morning; around 6am. There had been a low fog in the area, and it was just starting to clear up. Along the side of the highway, I kept on seeing these strange white blobs in the bush. By the time we got to Ear Falls, I just had to get out of the truck and see what the heck all of these blobs were. They were everywhere. Know what they were? Spider webs. Thousands of spider webs. It made me realize how many I walk through when I'm tromping through the bushes. The webs were only visible because the moisture had attached to the delicate silky threads. So, take note. You can't escape spiders; you have to accept them. (Keep in mind that they are actually very good to have in your yard) and just try your best not to get bit.

To this day, I wonder if that spider bite had an effect on my son. When he had colic, I secretly thought perhaps it might have been because of the spider bite. And when he demands flies for supper, I get a bit weirded out, but comply so I don't get bit again..................haha

PS: Thank you Chad, for the inspiration!
Chad's blog
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