While cleaning my house I’m never surprised to find spider webs, tailless lizards gasping for life, moths behind pictures, and of course roaches.  One of Annie Dillard’s essays flashes empathy as I recall her description of the contents of a spider web behind her toilet.

Spiders and their webs fascinate me.  One morning while I was walking to a friend’s goat pen, I stopped in awe at the dew laden pentagon, hexagon, and other-sized gons breaching gaps in the cow fencing.  Other days, I run to grab a camera to capture the rainbow colors reflected in the intricate webs stitching one tree branch to another.

Walking down the paths of my wooded property, often leading a group of guests from the treehouse to the hydrobikes, I simply pick up a stick, asking, “Do you know what a spider stick is?”

Those Golden Orbs may look menacing, with their silver dollar sized, eight legged bodies seemingly suspended in mid air, but who ever has received their bite?

Floating in the swimming pool, I see mama spiders literally covered with her myriads of babies as she balances on the surface of the water with her adaptable eight legs.  Touch her, and hundreds of miniscule, but completely formed, baby spiders splatter over the surface of the water.

Look carefully at the dimensions of a spider web: not all are simply one plane.  Many have multiple layers of depth tunneling through the air.  It’s always a shame to shatter those castles so artfully constructed from materials manufactured within the body of the spider.  I never want to destroy the maker of those intricate nets so adept at capturing their food.  Oh that we humans could be so resourceful and self sufficient.

Observe what the spider web catches: mosquitoes, roaches, flies, which I’ve seen struggling to escape, wrapped like a mummy in those filaments spun to entrap them.

Sometimes I unwind them, to release…wondering if escapee lives another day.

So, you can see that I’m “in shock” when I hear that someone who rents my treehouse/yurt  is appalled when s/he sees a spider…calling spiders in the rafters 14 feet above “an infestation…”  so shocked indeed, that s/he refuses to stay in the treehouse and even demands money back.

Usually it’s people who are “so excited” to stay in a treehouse in the woods, with only the footprint of four 6x6s and a 16x16 foot deck.  In addition, it’s the very same people who assure me that they love the woods, camp often, and always, it’s those people who make reservations the day before they want to come.

Once in Puerto Viarta, Mexico, while my family and I stayed at a plush condo on the Pacific, a spider bit me on the cheek.  Yes, it did swell, but other than closing my eye for a day or so, the only result was discomfort.

Not to say that the Brown Recluse or the Black Widow are not dangerous spiders.  Those of you who have spider fears, rather than my awe at spider efficiency and usefulness, please do not reserve time at my yurt/treehouse.

Spiders may certainly be present.  I hesitate to leave the can of insect poison for you to kill them, but I do have a broom if you want to reach up and sweep them away.

Spiders play their part in our ecological system, and they, as well as the deer and her fawn, are welcome in my woods.