With a toothbrush in my mouth and after-sleep nausea in my belly, I stood at the sink and watched as a spider climbed out through the drain hole.
There are a lot of thoughts that go through a person’s mind when witnessing something like that.
First was, What the hell is he doing in there? Spiders end up in some strange places, but being in the drain seems like an awful idea. The one who appeared to be living inside the dishwasher had previously won the award for Worst Spider Place to Be Ever, but INSIDE the drain might be a new contender. Perhaps somewhere there’s a spider who has elected to live inside the barrel of a gun, or right where the fuse meets the powder in a large, commercial-quality firework. But in my apartment, drain living has to be just about the lowest of the low.
Second thought: I wonder if spiders will ever evolve into the ability to play creepy music when doing things like emerging from drains. They don’t need it all the time, but those jarring strings you hear during a lot of horror movies would fit the scene nicely. I can’t imagine what actual use this would have from a survival standpoint. Then again, he was in the drain, so this is a spider who maybe can appreciate that we don’t always do things just because they are useful.
Third: Can spiders swim? I know some can, but I’m talking about the variety that I encounter. And can we take an entire species and decide, based on that alone, whether they can swim? Maybe spiders are like people and some can swim and some can’t? I will say that they often seem to be mystified and panicked by water. Which led me to Fourth Thought: Are spiders drinking water? It sounds like a stupid question, I know. But then why the hell do they seem so baffled when confronted with water? I understand it’s a lot larger, but if I saw a hot dog the size of a train car, I don’t think my first instinct would be to panic, even if it’s much larger than the already large hot dogs to which I’ve become accustomed.
It turns out my main problem with spiders is that I feel like they’re being too mysterious. Maybe they would strike us as being more majestic if they were a little more forthcoming with their secrets. And if they stopped with the emerging. Nobody should ever be “emerging” from anywhere and expect to be welcomed with open arms.