Itsy; a not so bitsy spider

i've been showering with a spider for a while now. a little kind of gold-brown spider who loved the steam of my hot showers and would delicately rappel down from the ceiling every time i turned the water on. i was always careful not to spray her with any water directly because an errant droplet would have sent her circling the drain. i liked her. she made showering more interesting, particularly since i like to stand under the hot spray for a long time. gave me something to look at. her tiny legs waved, as if she was gathering the moisture to herself. i noticed in tonight's shower that she was just a still shell of a spider, unmoving in her dusty web.

it hasn't been a good week for spiders.

last week i walked into the bathroom and i guess something caught in my peripheral vision because why else would i look up at the empty plant hanger? there she was, a halloween gag of a spider, perched back by the window frame, arms all akimbo, awaiting a dopey fall fly, i suppose. i stopped in my tracks and stared. i remembered one just like her on the back of my thigh one evening on the couch years ago, tickling. i reached back and brushed absent-mindedly, then sprang off the couch when i realized what it was. crawled the floor after it, beating it to death with a shoe. i like spiders, but christ. at least this one wasn't on my person, but who could tell when she might be? she could be in the towel i used to dry my wet head. she could hop down on me for fun. i don't know why, but i reached up, expecting her to recoil in fear. instead, she sprang at my hand and i was screaming because she was gone - just like that. and i have a head full of curly hair. i stood in the bathroom tossing my hair and beating at my head, certain she was in there. when i was at least satisfied that nothing could have lived through that, i retreated to think about that spider and what to do about her. 

immediately i became obsessed with her. i returned with my camera and she was back on her perch, coolly surveying me and the room. i filmed her for Facebook so everyone would believe she really was a really big spider. then i brought back a broom so i could whack her. she of the many eyes could see it coming and was gone before the broom came down and this time i saw where she went, down behind the window frame. sneaky beast. she had it all figured out. there was no way i was going to get near her. so i beat her web to death instead and retreated once more to consult with the web (hah, little pun there) and find out what she was. jumping spider? no, she didn't look like that. brown recluse? no, way too big. wolf spider? that's what the one on my leg was many years ago. it was hard to tell, the photos i had were fuzzy. hard to get near a creature that attacks you and disappears. i settled at last on wolf spider. they aren't known for coming inside that much, but here she was. this one did. no surprise, since i leave the porch door open so often. even my shower spider had never inspired such curiosity in me, but then again, she never menaced me.

i looked at hundreds of Google Images. wolf spider. pretty sure. they are aggressive, they jump. i went to bed satisfied that she couldn't possibly traverse the entire downstairs and the staircase to follow me to my room. the next day, there she was again. i had the constant feeling that i was being watched as i brushed my teeth and washed my face. and i bet she had the same feeling, because i never took my eyes off her. i filmed her again for my Facebook friends as i reached the end of a cat fishing pole up to her lair. she gathered herself together, pounced at it, then hid again in her crack. i screamed, but more in delight. she was a freak of nature and she was amusing me greatly.

i named her Itsy. i'm not sure when or why it happened, but i no longer felt the urge to kill her. i liked her in a creepy way. she reminded me of my other not so distant encounter with wildlife - the tiny mouse Sparky. granted, not as cute and even though i wasn't going to kill her anymore, i wouldn't have gone through heroics to save her life either. she was the antithesis of Sparky, so big and strong and confident and agressive. he was so tiny and vulnerable. i enjoyed documenting Itsy over the next couple days.

but then saturday morning she was not there. she never disappeared unless i scared her. um... so where was she? i swept back the shower curtain to wash my hair and there was her crumpled body laying on the porcelain. i was crestfallen. but then again, problem solved. probably killed by a cat who'd discovered her drinking. Beanie, most likely. the great hunter. probably played her to death. i gravely announced her demise on Facebook then rushed off to lunch.

that evening, i went to gather her little corpse from the tub to compare her size to a coin on camera. but wait.

there she was. up on her perch.

so who is that dead in the tub? i fished the body out with a tissue and took his photo with a nickel. see? just like i told you. big. but it was another big spider because mine was still up there.

i stood up on the toilet with my camera. what the hell? she looked bigger than ever. or perhaps i was bravely getting closer than ever. she was staring at me with her eight beady eyes. i could see the hair on every one of her 8 legs. she rested uneasily in her web, a hammock of white silk. but didn't i read that wolf spiders don't use webs to catch their prey? her speed was her deadliest weapon, she snatched meals out of the air. so why the hammock? she was interesting, and she was horrifying.

when i finally saw Itsy in all her glory on my computer screen, i shuddered. i was staring at the quintessential halloween spider. people keep spiders like this as pets and call them tarantulas. i was beginning to feel a bit unnerved. she was a lot scarier onscreen, which made her a lot scarier in real life. do they bite? well, not really, unless provoked. oops, i had provoked her a couple times now. if they bite, what is it like? well, here are the fangs (thank you, Google) and here are the holes in the flesh, and here is the inflammation and necrosis. OK, so they were worst case scenario, but spiders like Itsy make you think worst case scenario. i wasn't liking it much. but i couldn't see any way of catching her, not where she'd fashioned her lair. she'd even see the vacuum hose coming and escape. well, as long as she didn't bother me and i didn't bother her, perhaps we could live together.

but i hadn't thought of the babies. suddenly as i scrolled through hundreds of spider images, i found one that made my body itch and my mouth shriek. there was an Itsy on my screen, her back covered with spiderlings. they were revolting to look at. sure, wolf spiders are the good moms of the spider world, they carry their offspring on their backs everywhere they go, stopping to let an errant baby crawl back on if it falls off. how sweet. i really didn't need to see that. and it dawned on me. what if the body of the spider in the bathtub had been her mate? what if she'd murdered her him in the tub, not Beanie at all? is that what they do? if the dead one was a he (he was smaller, after all) then that could mean Itsy was with child. or with spiderlings, yet unhatched. was that hammock for her kids? ugh, she was starting to really give me the willies. all i could think about was Itsy and that man spider, and how she must have used him and then killed him. and there she was, all smug in her baby hammock, waiting to present me with a hundred little ones just like her.

i couldn't have it. no. i could not have Itsy sporting a hundred spiderlings overhead. i couldn't have them skittering around my house, taking up residence, growing as big as Itsy. and what of that air traffic control tower not long ago that had to be shut down because baby spiders swarmed the controls? that could be my house.

RAID. i had some RAID. hornet killer, but if it could kill a white faced hornet, i was pretty sure it could kill Itsy. she looked at me as i stood in the doorway. "i'm sorry," i said, "i really am sorry". and then i blasted her. true to form, Itsy leaped to attack the spray as i dead-eyed it right into her hammock, then she fled into her crack. the plant hanger was dripping by the time i was done, the air wretched. i turned on the fan with a sad sigh and closed the door until morning. she'd either be dead and gone, or bigger and badder than ever and out for my blood.

she's never there. i look. i still haven't stopped looking. i fully expect to see her. and then i don't and so i still think to myself 'i'm sorry, Itsy'.

today i opened the old gas grill out back and a spider much smaller than Itsy dangled there with one perfectly round egg sac. but the other egg sac beside it had burst open and its spiderling contents clung to the web, so tiny and pale and really quite remarkable. but these spiderlings are outside and that's OK. i examined them curiously, photos for posterity, made sure the mom wasn't a black widow (could i murder another spider in just a week's time?) and closed the lid. i haven't named her, but she can live and so can the spidey gang. they're outside, right where they belong.

it hasn't happened yet, but one of these days i will stop looking for Itsy.

there's a mouse in the house

is a the blade of a shovel too obvious a grave marker?

i just finished painting the names of the murdered mouse family on a rusty shovel that long ago lost its handle.

Velvet
Benny
Matilda
&
Miracle Mouse Sparky

miracle because he survived the unthinkable. hard to believe that only a week's transpired since all that. it all started over ice cream and laundry. i was in the basement loading up the washer and my sister stopped over asking if i wanted to go get a twist with sprinkles. need you ask? i either left the basement door open or never closed it all the way. usually no big deal, but that night it resulted in mayhem. i came home to find what looked for all the world like the usual puked up grey hairball laying on the kitchen floor (they're never hairballs, by the way, you ever notice? they're hair logs). but it was a baby mouse and it was still alive. an infant so small his eyes weren't even open yet. he had two pin prick wounds on his temple. oh god.

so i held him on my lap and got on Facebook, the great purveyor of advice, and wrote "what do i do!?"

i never imagined that my cats' vet would be on and would respond instantly. it was 9:58 PM and yet she offered to meet me at the Cat Hospital to euthanize the poor baby. i cried the whole way there, racing, for some reason, as if i were saving his life instead of ending it. as i drove the jeep, moon shining down on us, i wondered if a baby mouse could get me out of a speeding ticket. velvet (i named him velvet - him because to me everything's a him until proven otherwise, don't ask me why) was nestled in a pocket of flannel meant to polish jewelry. his little pink winding sheet.

it was quite a scientific affair, euthanizing such a tiny baby. he went into a plastic cup to be anesthetized, the sort you'd put over someone's face. as i waited for dr. R to fill a syringe i lifted it to say a final goodbye and somehow flipped the cup and velvet went flying onto a metal shelf, much to my horror. i wasn't sure he needed killing after that. after we were sufficiently sure he was asleep (or already dead), dr. R made sure with a syringe of euthanasia, telling me that once a friend of hers had an injured mouse put to sleep at the local emergency hospital for the whopping heartless fee of $150. velvet died on the house. and we both returned to our friday evening.

i shouldn't have said it, but i did. "i hope i don't come home to find more." and i did.

but i couldn't call her out again for more mouse euthanasia. there was another one on the kitchen floor, really barely alive. and yet another where i suspected the nest was hidden in the little washing room of the basement. that one was covered in filth as if batted around like a hacky sack. yet when i picked him up he came to wild life, wriggling madly in my fingertips. i felt the need to wash him clean and did so carefully in the bathroom. my god, he was alive. i didn't know what to do with them (benny the weak and sparky the lively). so i turned to Google. surely there is some homemade way to make euthanasia. i looked at my shelves. a cotton ball of alcohol? nail polish remover? how do you kill a mouse? it made me sick to even have to do it. of course you can do it quickly with the drop of a brick or the roll of a tire, but i couldn't. if only they could just go to sleep. and i found it, you could mix white vinegar (i had it) and baking soda (i had that, too) and the resulting gas would end their tiny lives. so i set it all up on the basement floor under a big flipped over tupperware, the babies nestled in my mom's soft brown alaskan winter hat. it was supposed to be over in 20 minutes. an hour later i checked and it was anything but over. they were no less alive. now, what do i do at midnight? i left them in their woolen nest and hoped their mother would find and haul them back home.

they were my first thought in the morning. surely they would be gone or dead. but again, they were neither.

OK, now i owe it to them to save them. so i Googled yet again and read how to save a baby mouse's life. i got artist's paintbrushes and kitten formula and raced back home. they'd already been 12 hours without their mother. but when i got back, benny had died. sparky? he was one miracle mouse. he was squeaking at me and wriggling. i held him - he was no bigger than half my forefinger - and dipped the brush in warmed formula and offered it. i decided he was a very smart mouse. he understood and drank. once he was sated, i warmed a disk in the microwave that would keep him warm and i put the whole operation in an large antique domed brass birdcage where i hoped he'd be safe from the very curious cats. it seemed perfect.

every two hours, the internet told me. i had to feed sparky every two hours. now, i was willing to go to great lengths for this little spunky guy, but all night wasn't one of those things. so i fed him all i could all day long and decided he'd just have to make it through the night or not. of course he did.

at first i expected him to be dead every time i looked into his woolly nest, but he just kept on living and getting stronger, a little bigger, a little squeakier. he knew my fingertips meant food. his eyes never did open in the 4 days of our time together, but he had fine velvety grey fur. these two things told me he was between 10-14 days old.

there are things you never imagine yourself doing in your lifetime. i mean, it never even enters your head. washing a baby mouse's face is one of them. i learned to wash the formula off his face with the wet tip of a Q-tip and then flip it over to the dry side and rub his belly to massage his digestive system into action. it was comical, being proud that a mouse peed and pooped for me. i kept him nice and clean and warm and i'd panic when i misplaced the damn paintbrush. his Esso tiger coffee cup was heated a dozen times a day, his disk nuked for heat, his bedclothes washed.  one night a cat knocked his birdcage off my bureau at 2 AM and i crawled all over my rug begging to find him. so far he'd survived a cat attack, my pathetic attempt to euthanize him, a night on a dank cement floor with his dying brother, no mother (i found her dead too and named her Matilda after the mouse in the video who taught me how to care for him). he survived being knocked to the floor and my bumbling attempts to successfully feed him, sometimes almost drowning him in formula.

on sunday sparky attended a cookout. i had no choice, i couldn't leave him unfed in a house full of murderous cats for hours. so he rode in the footwell of the Jeep under the heat and was easily the most unexpected party guest in history. it was awkward explaining why i was carrying a birdcage; um, yes, it's a baby mouse i'm trying to rescue, but the in-laws took it in stride. they already knew i am a little crazy. or a lot. as sparky slept after a feeding, someone's iced tea glass teetered on the edge of a table and toppled onto him, nearly drowning him. sparky was sure using up his nine lives, if mice have nine lives. the children were fascinated by the party guest and that pleased me. i doubt they will ever forget the day a mouse came to a cookout.

as the days went on, i grew more confident. i announced my endeavors on Facebook and suddenly sparky had a huge following rooting for him between my page and that of my kitten Bug. who knew that so many people would be charmed by a baby mouse? some of them would start their days checking their smart phones to see how sparky was faring. each day i'd say "well, sparky survived another night....". and sparky went to work with me. again, i had no choice. he slept in a box on my desk on monday and i later took him to therapy, where my shrink was enthralled. he gave me a glass terrarium for better mouse protection. sparky was chalking up the 'firsts'. first mouse ever to attend a cookout. to go to work. to go to therapy. he was on a roll.

 the internet told me wild baby mice need immediate care, within 2 hours, in order to survive. and here i'd wasted that time trying to euthanize sparky and benny and then leaving them for their mother to find, not knowing she was already dead too. but sparky was going strong. the stats told me he had a 5-25% chance of survival, but as the days passed i got cocky. my mouse was going to live. i started shopping online for mouse habitats and mouse exercise wheels and worrying that i would save him only to have a cat kill him down the line. but if he lived, would he live one year or several? i'd make him live several! i was, after all, now an expert and so was he. he'd grab the paintbrush and suck and i'd wash his face, rub his belly and clean his butt. the internet warned of the dangers of bloat. bloat could kill. i began to wonder how anyone ever had a second child after going through this kind of thing with a first. so much attention, so much worry, so much time.

sparky rewarded me with so much life. frankie and tad did not care that i was feeding a mouse, they just wanted room in my lap. beanie and big, the great hunters and no doubt reason for sparky's circumstances, sat with huge eyes that transmitted their incomprehension. they give me dead mice for presents, after all. why were they not allowed to murder this one? better still, why was i feeding it? i could tell benie was just beside himself. after all, it was on my lap.

but tuesday was another story. sparky was lethargic. i had to wake him to eat and he was ornery about it. and he smelled funny. i thought maybe i hadn't cleaned him well enough. but his poop was weird too. it wasn't regular mouse poop, it was pale and soft. is this what bloat does? i massaged and massaged his belly. we went to work and i ignored emails to tend to my mouse. someone came to see me and apparently knows me well, because he didn't blink an eye when he found me feeding a mouse with a paintbrush at my computer. i was going to devote my day to making sure he improved but my plans were thwarted by students, new students arriving at the college and not enough staff to help down at the big track and tennis facility where they checked in. so i had to go. at noon i ate pizza and fed sparky in the equipment room. still not eating well, still not squeaking or wriggling like just last night. i had to sit for hours in a steamy airless building waiting on parents and students, sparky in a box at my feet. again, at 2 PM i decided i have priorities, and my mouse was it. we went out back to a picnic table in the cool shade but i was immediately troubled. he was not interested in food and should have been, always was before. i offered the paintbrush, flicked away gnats, rubbed his belly, checked his heating disk. was he too hot or cold? did he have enough air? again, he smelled funny. i begged him, sparky just hang on until i get out of here and i will spend every waking minute on you.

at 4 PM we were allowed to close up shop and i gathered my things. my boss, sucking on a candy, asked what i had in the box. a mouse, i said. "a mouse for a computer?" he asked. um, no a real mouse. "can i see?" a little embarrassed and with some hesitation, i opened the cover wide to show him. "he doesn't look so good," he said.

sparky was dead. i poked gently with a finger to make sure, but i didn't even have to. it was pretty obvious. he was still warm. "i'm going home to cry now", i told them, and walked to the exit holding my mouse box while tears blinded me. my dead sparky. in my Jeep i started crying and bawled all the way home on the back roads. i blamed the students, i blamed Central Check-In and the heat and the airlessness and the fact that i couldn't check on him or feed him as often as i would have otherwise.

what did i do wrong? was the formula too strong? didn't i rub his belly enough? was it because i let him go overnight without a feeding? had i been too over-cofident and not vigilant enough? i laid sparky to rest with his siblings velvet and benny and his mother matilda in the pink flannel in a little tupperware. i guess the fact that i'd never buried them yet showed that i was not overly confident. i saved them so they could all be buried together.

and so they were. under the pear tree beside my bunny gianni. they were protected with a sheet of plastic for a week to keep scavenging predators out (once one dug up and stole my baby bunny). i know it's all the cycle of life, it's nature. i know the odds were stacked against us and i know i did all i could. but all that makes it no easier. i had bonded with that little mouse and as far as he knew, i was his mommy. he was my charge, his life depended on me for 4 days and i failed.  it was tough breaking the news to his eager Facebook fans who were already clamoring for a sparky page all his own. it was pretty amazing to know that other people cried for sparky. my pages filled up with condolences, with tears and hearts and assurances that i'd done all i could, more than most would have.

sparky died on my 'cancer-versary'. four years earlier on august 27th i was diagnosed with breast cancer.  at first when he died i thought what a shitty gift to get on this day. and then i realized, it was a wonderful four day gift to have had him at all. 

i didn't try to save sparky's life for any other reason than i thought i owed it to him after all my cats and i had put him through. i mean, hell, i'd tried to kill him. i wasn't noble. no one except my shrink even knew i'd first tried my hand at homegrown euthanasia. and so that haunts me too. what if i weakened him in those wasted our with that ridiculous gassing? people gave me credit for having such a pure heart and such kindness. they blessed me and declared me an angel. but just like my "About Me" says on this blog, i'm just a person. i don't know how someone else could drop a brick or roll a tire over a baby mouse, i just knew i couldn't. and if i couldn't do that, i couldn't also just let him die a slow death of starvation and dehydration. so that meant only one thing. i had to try.

and sparky rewarded me (and so many others) for those efforts. so vulnerable, so fragile, so tiny. that little spark of life left a huge mouseprint on me and i will never forget those 4 days in august.

so you want to be a writer
if it doesn’t come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don’t do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it for money or
fame,
don’t do it.
if you’re doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don’t do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don’t do it.
if it’s hard work just thinking about doing it,
don’t do it.
if you’re trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.
if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you’re not ready.
don’t be like so many writers,
don’t be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don’t be dull and boring and
pretentious, don’t be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don’t add to that.
don’t do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.
when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.
there is no other way.
and there never was.

- charles bukowski

for the children of Sandy Hook

i made this days after the shootings at Sandy Hook. it is made from a piece of an old door, some star beads, a piece of rusty metal, an antique porcelain baby, shells i found on the beach, bullet casings, a tiny candle, and 2 small dried rose buds.

anatomy of melancholy

ghosts in the trees & the door to my yard

snow for the snowdrop

i'm back.

spring rising from the dead.