True Confessions

I confess. I'm not a spider person. No, don't worry. I'm okay. I just mean that I'm not crazy about spiders. Or at least not Australian spiders. I'm fine with Daddy Longlegs. We had them in New York where I grew up. And I loved the movie Daddy Longlegs with Fred Astaire. But I'm talking about serious spiders. Big spiders. Lots of big spiders. I mean, I'm a Buddhist—I like everything in moderation. And that goes for spiders, too. Especially big ones.

So if I don't like spiders, why my preoccupation with them? I'm glad you asked.

As I said there are lots of spiders in Australia and I'm currently in Australia. To my great good fortune, Celine, the woman I am staying with, likes spiders. (No, don't start worrying again. She has a healthy, compassionate fearless view of spiders and admires their web-building genius. I do share her admiration on this.) So for the first week or so, I would call out "Celine—spider!" and she'd quickly come with a cloth to catch the spider and gently escort it out of the house.

Today as I was working and gazing out the window (strictly for therapeutic reasons to rest my eyes—honest), I noticed a bunch of white dots all clumped together next to a large white spider that had been fighting with another spider a few days ago in the same spot. (Apparently, I rest my eyes a lot here.) I got up and looked more closely. It looked like there were about a hundred little white dots. Oops.

I went to Celine and asked her about the wisdom of spider eggs on the outside of the window (with the screen that our cat Kahleen likes to climb to gaze in at me at eye level. This unfortunately has left many tears in the screen that are just the right size for playful baby spiders to use to come in to scare the Buddhist nun). Celine smiled comfortingly and said, yes, it was best not to have a hundred spiders hatching outside my room. (She was probably also concerned for the thunderous effect my "Celine—spider!" would have on baby spider ears. If spiders have ears. Trust me, I have NOT gotten close enough to see if they do.)

Anyway, Celine cleverly found a large leaf and scooped up Mama and her babies and walked out on to the grass. Celine then commented that she didn't want to put them down on the grass because the ants would eat them (Honestly, it's like a nature reserve here!). So the spider family was gently relocated to a safer location where the new babies would not be eaten by ants or deafened by the unusually loud vocalizations of Buddhist nuns...