Halloween: Ida The Spider

[Katie-Ellen]

I wrote this as a poem for children some years ago and did a few drawings to go with it

Some busybody has just swept away her web.

Ida is not a happy spider.

She was inspired by Charlotte a stonkingly big wolf spider who used to live in the fireplace in a cottage I once lived in, Primrose Cottage on Goosefoot Lane, Samlesbury Bottoms, and yes, this was a real address though you could be forgiven for thinking I am pulling your leg. I say big.This was only Brit style big, of course. Hardly one of your Goliath spiders.

Spiders have much mythology and folklore attached to them. Yes, they are venomous, all of them. The problem is only the species; the size of the spider and the amount of venom. But cobwebs have been traditionally used as wound dressings.

Share your best or worst or most poetic or numinously illuminating spider thoughts, remedies, stories and encounters?

 

[Rich.]

DJ drop a beat!

ba-dum cha … ba-dum-dum cha

Yo yo yo! Halloween! Spirit of the SPIDER! Hear me now!

My name's Rich SPIRIT OF THE SPIDER! and I'm arachnophoBIC
Man-I-hate-this-fear-it-cuts-me-so-SICK
The way they move them legs all CLICK CLACK CLICK
Lose my mind in their speed like a DARK BAD TRIP
Spider eyes draw me in like an INK BLACK DRIP
Venom fangs prick my skin with a sharp TICK TICK
See-me-caught-in-a-timeless-hunter's-TRICK
Perfect death: Kiss of eight HEAR ME NOW! SPIRIT OF THE SPIDER! I’m arachnophoBIC!

 

[Katie-Ellen]

It's the way they move, isn't it....truly alien.

Ida is a Litopian, though. She does not write...well, she does. Her web is a story constantly retold, and life is the real life web.
But she is a great reader. Here she is with what she is reading at the moment: Famous Spiders by Robert Bruce and Humans: The Facts: Terrible But True.

Seriously though, the spider is a potent symbol in art literature and mythology, and are we not like Arachne, working away at our looms.

"The spider has symbolized patience and persistence due to its hunting technique of setting webs and waiting for its prey to become ensnared. ... Spiders are associated with creation myths because they seem to weave their own artistic worlds."



https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends/symbolic-spider-wove-its-way-through-history-002215

 

[Rich.]

It's the way they move, isn't it....truly alien.

Exactly.

I used to share a flat with a guy who kept tarantulas as pets. He had a Chilean rose (the archetypal orange and brown tarantula), and a bird-eating spider (biiiiig). They lived in glass tanks. I would often watch them for long periods. The bird eater would lift up a leg, slowly, to let the cricket pass, ignore it for days, and then, when it was hungry... bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam-bam. Suck.

Wonderous. Horrible.

I really am arachnophobic.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Well, wherever there's a spider there's arachnophobia. Sorry 'bout that. But safe as story symbols, and...and ... Charlotte!

(I know, there's no arguing with feelings, it is a losing wicket)

 

[Rachel Caldecott]

My arachnopobia was well known at home when I was growing up. It reached a point when, while driving, my brother spotted a spider dangling in front of him. He started flapping his hands around and the car veered all over the place. "What's wrong?" I yelled, terrified. "A prawn!" he shouted back. "A fucking enormous prawn just fell on me!"

Now I'm scared of prawns too.

Totally true story.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

I'd have been a tad more scared of his driving.

But, no, I wouldn't much care for the unscheduled crustacean encounter either, heheh...