The Mid-Morning Spider
October 9th, 2007 at 08:07am
It’s 4:20am, I’m busy finishing up some loose ends of a bunch of website migrations at work, and have the radio with Clive Robertson on in the background. I’m having an enjoyable morning in my own company, and then I spot a black shape on the ceiling a few metres away from me…I’m not alone, it’s a spider of unknown origin, about 15 centimetres across.
There is something mildly disturbing about finding out that you are not alone in a room that you believe you have been alone in for the last few hours, and the thing sharing the room with you has six more legs than you do.
At this point in time I started talking to the spider, it was already moving towards the other side of the room, so the chat was fairly civil and mainly consisted of me mentioning that I had no intention of harming it, as long as it had no intention of harming me. I then, in lieu of the spider’s real name, nicknamed it “Boris”, found a copy of “Boris The Spider” by The Who, muted Clive and played the song for the spider…an interesting song, but on reflection, the lyrics probably make it one of the less friendly songs to play to a spider, especially one that was being as nice as Boris was.
Anyway, I got back to work and kept an eye on the spider…and then lost track of the spider for about twenty minutes, before I spotted it standing near a light near the exit. I had been planning on going across the road to get some milk to go with some breakfast cereal for a while, but first I wanted to work out what sort of spider Boris was, so I walked over slowly and as I approached, Boris suddenly coiled back in to (possibly) a defensive position…I backed away and left it alone.
5am came and I was ready for breakfast, so after a bit more conversation with the spider, I slowly crept around the area it was occupying on the ceiling, walked out the door and crossed the road. As I walked across the road it occurred to me that since I had stopped referring to the spider as “Boris”, it was being much more friendly, wasn’t jumping when I came near, and was staying on its side of the room. Perhaps, as it was being friendly when not being called Boris, it was actually a female spider and did not want to be referred to by a male name. I decided against calling it Borisette as I didn’t think it would particularly appreciate that.
As I walked back to the office I could see that the spider hadn’t left its position near the light, and as the morning went on and I enjoyed my breakfast and continued working, it barely moved from the location. It was almost a stand-off situation, and I eventually came to the conclusion that the better song (than Boris The Spider) for the situation was Aha’s “Take On Me”, especially the lines:
You shying away
I’ll be coming for you anyway
[..]
Take me on
I’ll be gone
in a day or two
Around 6:30 I lost track of the spider again, and then I worked out where it was a little while later when I spotted the edges of two legs on the far end of the light it had been occupying earlier in the morning. After this it moved in to the sunlight, and then I lost track of it again around 7:15 and haven’t seen it since.
I am reminded, ever so slightly, of the morning where I came to the conclusion that, if gravity were reversed, ceilings would make terrible floors. I suppose it really depends on the size of the thing using the ceiling as a floor. For a spider it doesn’t really matter as it is used to climbing over these strange objects we place on the ceiling, but for us the objects would be trip hazards.
I think (2UE overnight producer) Abe is right…I think about these things too much.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Samuel's Editorials
2 Comments
1. Frankster | October 9th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Great story Sam, I had the same situation but with a completely different beast the other morning – a bogong moth! Was lying in bed half asleep being a sunday morning when I spotted it across from me just a metre or so below the ceiling. I didn’t notice it when I got home from being out on saturday night so it may have been there all night just in that one position.
Anyway I got up, showered, did the usual things, came back to the bedroom and it was still there. I didn’t really want to hit it with flyspray as the smell of that spray would hang around for a while and my audio gear was under it – the distance between the moth and the gear was a typical near ceiling to desk space. Suddenly of its own accord, it falls off and lands behind my audio gear – a stack which is seperate from the others which consists of the CD player, cassette deck, minidisc deck and equaliser. I thought OK, it’s probably ended up on the floor – couldn’t find it there. It must’ve landed in the tangle of cabling behind each of these components. So I gave up and continued doing sound stuff. Was nowhere to be seen all day long. 9pm came, and there it was, emerging from the back of the gear (interesting that I turned each of these components on about half an hour – must’ve gotten hot back there!), it hit my computer screen which was right next to the gear, flew off, and went up against the front screen door – I opened the door, and out it flew.
2. Pen 15 | October 9th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
A similar thing happened to me with a spiderman. What a filthy perv he was.