Firstly, a bit of background info… I’m not the hugest fan of spiders. I can cope or tolerate them a lot more than most people in our house, I’ll even bravely rescue the little monsters from our bath, but generally we’re not the best of mates. And this time of the year, as I’m sure you’re well aware, is big fat stripey Garden Spider time of the year. A bit like this…
Well a few weeks ago, a certain big fat stripey spider (who we christened Charlotte) decided to set up camp outside our front door 😯 She wasn’t right outside the door (thank God!!!), but her impressive web was still pretty close. Her intricately woven home was suspended between our front window & a large hydrangea bush in our garden. Often the weather would completely destroy her home, but without fail the web would be fully restored the next day. I was impressed and was secretly growing quite attached to Charlotte. Trips to the bins (just beyond the hydrangea) were a little fraught and Charlotte’s huge shadow on our front door at night was more than a little alarming, but we were generally happy for Charlotte to remain where she was. She was actually quite fascinating to observe (from the safety of our front-room of course!!!).
Today we had a viewing booked on our house, which we still haven’t sold and a few minutes before our viewing arrived I suddenly had a thought. ‘What if our potential house buyers were completely petrified of spiders?’ If they were, we’d be lucky to get them through the door!!! There was only one thing for it. Charlotte had to go…
I quickly armed myself with a suitable Charlotte removing tool. Sawyer has a giraffe hobby-horse which I spotted and it seemed like the perfect tool, especially as the large head is detachable (I didn’t want to look too silly!!!). With hobby-giraffe pole in hand I opened our front door. Charlotte was in the midst of re-constructing her web once again and it was already looking mighty impressive. It seemed a shame to destroy it, but it had to go.
The main web was suspended from our window by a few long strands of web. If I snapped these then the web would simply fall onto the hydrangea. That was surely the best & less painful option? I reached up and swished at the strands with my hobby-giraffe pole, but the strands were clearly made of sterner or stickier stuff. They simply wrapped around my pole, which was now bearing the weight of the whole web. A few more frantic swishes and I was left with Charlotte hanging on a thread, dangling from my pole 😯 A sudden gust of wind and Charlotte was whistling her way through the air right towards my head!!! I leapt backwards in horror and promptly disappeared over the small garden wall into our neighbour’s garden 😳
Charlotte was rather unceremoniously dumped into the hydrangea and I’ve not seen her since!!!
