It’s 5:30 am on Tuesday, so I’m trying to find a reason to be happy that I’m alive. It is a well-known, established fact that Tuesday, across all humanities and cultures, sucks. To help me deal with the fact that Tuesday has once again arrived, I kibosh politics and Reddit, I don’t think about my classes for the day or the swamp of work awaiting me. I stumble from room to room in my dark flat, pushing buttons, emptying bladders, and feeding a small animal who won’t stop meowing at me. All things part of a routine morning, but would likely fascinate an alien making notes were I actually an inmate on a human zoo on Tralfamadore.
With coffee entering my system, my ass in a chair, and the cat not meowing, I approach content. But then I open my computer and go to Smithsonian. Smithsonian is like a daily shot of B-12 catered just for my likes and needs. It hits all my happy spots: history, culture, folklore, travel, cuisine. Name it, I love it. So it was with a quavering hand and a sense of deep betrayal that I would come across a title of vastly triggering effect: This Massive Web – Home to More Than 100,000 Spiders – Found in a Cave in Europe Could Be the World’s Largest
My horror existed on several levels. In the first place, I was harboring a hope that there weren’t 100,000 spiders on the Earth let alone living in one house. That hope, as are they all, was murdered in the street. Also, they live in Europe – where I also live. This means that they can get to me without a boat, a thing which troubles me greatly. One of the only reasons I can sleep at night is because the Goliath Bird Eater and the Giant Huntsman spiders exist across an ocean or two. The 100,000 spiders (that’s 800,000 eyes for those counting) in this article live in a cave nearby. They only need to take a train to get to me and with so many of them they could definitely organize such as thing.
To be fair, I think troubling me more is my betroublement. You see, truth be told, I have come around on my arachnophobia in the last years. When a spider ends up in the house I’m not exactly thrilled, but I don’t screech like someone being stabbed to death by Jason Vorhees either (as I may or may not used to do). I have a moment of panic and then I compose myself and leave the house for 5–12 hours and hope someone else takes care of things. A day max.
I put my computer down and check the house for giant spiders. None are present. I have felt things on my back and legs since reading the title, but after a quick strip search, I ascertain that the only thing there that’s going to kill me is a love of hotdogs and not enough cardio. I decide that the problem here is, like many things, a lack of knowledge. Stupidly, I decide that knowing is half the battle, and I open up the article.
This was, as you already know, a stupid mistake.
First, it’s not 100,000 spiders, but 110,000 spiders. So I’ve added 10,000 spiders and 80,000 eyes to my nightmare. Next, we learn that the spiders’ cave’s opening is in Greece, but it and the massive web containing (to use their words) the ‘extraordinary’ ‘enormous’ and ‘terrifyingly high number’ of spiders is actually in Albania. These guys are already crossing borders.
“Ha,” say I! “Ha!”
It’s possible I’m having a coffee stroke.
I read on.
Again: mistake.
The web is made up of two different – usually rival – spider species. They’re not only in Europe and crossing borders, a big no-no these days, but they are working together. Also, the web was discovered by a group of speleologists – that is, cave scientists. Correction: the web was discovered by a group of Czech speleologists – that is, local cave scientists.
And the eight-legged, eight-eyed storm moves inland.
It’s not hard to see how this plays out. One of the Czech speleologists sits down in the cave to enjoy a few rohlíky and a vat of Lučina. A cross-section of the spiders – now working together – somehow attach themselves to the Czech speleologist’s uniform. He then unwittingly (under hypnosis or not) brings them back to the Czech Republic. There’s virtually no chance this Czech speleologist is not one of my next-door neighbors. (There’s a shifty-eyed guy I recently caught adoringly looking into our building’s basement. Dog help me.)
I finally come to terms with my lot. The 110,000 spiders are on their way to pick me apart and eat me like the midge flies they currently subsist upon. I should just grease myself up with chili sauce and make myself delectable. Of course this happens on a Tuesday.
