To Spare the Spider

We are the earth, made of the same stuff; there is no other, no division between us and "lower" or "higher" forms of being.

-Estella Lauder

I’ve been thinking a lot in the last couple of years about how humans have singled themselves out from the rest of nature and the world around us. We lump animals and trees and other living beings into “nature” and act like we are somehow separate from it.

But the fact is that we aren’t separate. Humans and nature are inseparable. And when we harm nature, we harm ourselves.

Allow me to tell you a story about a spider. And a cat. And a mistake I made.

The rain is absent this late in the summer. Parched soil is drying out the roots of the freshly potted chrysanthemums. The Jeep has faithfully returned me to this old, yellow, brick home in the middle of the fields. I’m still in my favorite pinstripe black pants and sporting a new hunter-green cable knit sweater made just for the looming chill of autumn. I climb out, head to the garden hose attached to the side of the house, and start my evening outdoor routine.

I don’t fully close the white, two-car garage door. A 6-inch gap is left between the cement and the door, so the fuzzy gray cat can find some solace or safety from the creatures that roam the fields and neighboring forests. She came with the house when we bought it, and I have grown quite fond of her precocious meow and her longing for a scratch on the head. I named her Louise. She has not come home for the day yet, but I am a little bit early.

The squeak, squeak, squeak of turning on the spigot, and the sound of the hose water splashing on the pavement signals the end of the working day. And that a cold beer awaits.

I pick up the nozzle, drag the hose, thrust on the stream of well water, and make my way around the small porch to give the mums a drink. The sound of the water brings a sense of calm and closure. The purple, orange, and yellow puffs of petals remind me that life is magnificent.

With the mums’ thirst quenched, I cut off the hose and turn on my heels to retreat into the house when a brown spot on the garage door catches my eye. A second glance revealed eight long legs. A moment of “Nope, I don’t care” attitude pulsed through the electricity of my brain. Still, a third and closer inspection revealed the poisonous nature of a Brown Recluse spider. And in our stare, I felt like I had no choice but to declare war on the tiny, dangerous beast.

“Now, little lady, why did your adventures bring you to this place?” I think to myself with trepidation as I begin the first talks of peace. “I do not venture into your fields and trees, and I leave you be in your webs in the pines. Why, oh, why, did you trek this way?”

She stares. She is still. Negotiating is not going well.

“Okay, well, listen, I don’t want to do this. I don’t. See, you can hurt me a little. You can kill some of my flesh. But that little, gray fuzzy cat that will soon cross under this door? You could snuff out her sounds, and I would find her stiff and cold on the concrete.”

My head and heart are in a tiny battle that tosses around my values and beliefs, and it feels like boulders crashing within the confines of my ribs. “Do no harm. You have no right to take that spider’s life. But it could kill Louise, and you will regret not winning this fight. Can there even be a winner here anyways?”

It’s all about power and control, after all. Sometimes we have it and sometimes lack it. In times of our powerlessness, we may feel afraid or hopeless or untethered. Like a spider on a garage door staring down the creature who is perched atop the food chain, we negotiate our lives. We fight for power and control with our bosses, insurance companies, politicians, coworkers, and spouses. When we hold power, we can feel enormous pressure, and often, our true nature is revealed.

Sometimes our collective power as humans is unmatched. Yet, when we are faced with a tiny spider and what to do about it, one person’s actions can have a ripple effect on the entire ecosystem. Power is both something to respect and something to fear.

The ripples of some acts of power and control reach far more than others, though the choice may be the same. Maybe if I smash the spider, it will change the whole ecosystem? Perhaps if I smash the spider, nothing will change at all? What if I don’t smash the spider?

Then, of course, there is the in-between. When do we have the right to use our power to accomplish the greater good when there is a side effect of harm? Do we have the right to use our control that way? For instance, if scientists researching an Alzheimer’s cure need to experiment on 10,000 chimpanzees and those chimpanzees would ultimately perish, but the lives and memories of countless people would survive with the new medicine—would it be justified?

I raise my right foot, leg bent at the knee, and thrust my heel toward the tiny soul sticking to the garage door.

Because in my heart, I did not want to harm her, I hesitated. And it was not a direct hit. She fell to the wet pavement and was injured. She scurried as fast as her broken, little body could carry her away from the battle that she was now finding herself losing.

And it pained me. I caused suffering, and I must swiftly end it. I stomped and missed.

Adrenaline is punching through my limbs, but not as much as it is through hers. The spider is using all of her strength, despite her injuries. She was running away from harm and the end of her life.

I stomped again. Finally, easing her pain and panic.

“I’m so sorry,” I said as I towered over her lifeless body, her legs curled into her core. “I’m just so very sorry,” my eyes blurred with welled tears and acknowledgment that she mattered and I had caused her suffering and death.

Meeeeeoooooow, yelled Louise as she came into view from under a nearby shrub. She was the only witness to my crime.

“I’m sorry, but I had to do it. That spider mattered, but so do you.” I scratch Louise on her little head, her gold eyes peering into the depths of my being and as if to say, “Thank you, my friend.”

But I don’t feel like being thanked. The thing about choices, especially powerful ones, is that we will never know the outcome of the rivaling, defeated decision. I have pondered the question, “what if that spider just turned around and went back to the field or the pines and never bothered Louise?” for longer than it took for me to decide to smash it. And that brings me profound sadness and shame.

It would seem my evening routine of watering the flowers does not always provide comfort and calm. Getting caught up in some internal battle with feeling both powerful and powerless is uncomfortable at best and deadly at worst.

I have long kept a photograph of Rosa Parks on my desk as a reminder of the power of our choices. If faced with a poisonous spider again, I will still protect Louise from the danger, but I hope to craft a way to spare the spider.

Whenever I tell this story or read this story, there is always someone who says, “It’s just a spider.” And, if you, too, are thinking, “It’s just a spider,” well, then I’m afraid we will have to agree to disagree. And I would kindly ask you to consider a passage from E.B. White’s, Charlotte’s Web,

“What's miraculous about a spider's web?" said Mrs. Arable. "I don't see why you say a web is a miracle--it's just a web."

"Ever try to spin one?" asked Mr. Dorian.

Do you remember this story about a pig named Wilbur and his friendship with a barn spider named Charlotte? She made magical webs to persuade the farmer to let Wilbur live instead of sending him to slaughter. Charlotte saves him over and over again.

Remember Wilbur yelling out for Charlotte after she dies? My grammy held me and tried to soothe my grief as I sobbed for a solid ten minutes.

The novel sums up the difference between the worldview of adults vs. children. When we were kids, Charlotte wasn’t “just a spider.” She was a magical, revered friend. As adults, it is so easy to forget how enchanted the natural world is.

E.B. White also wrote a book on his personal failure to save a pig from slaughter, and it was rumored that he wrote Charlotte's Web in an attempt "to save his pig in retrospect.”

And so maybe I tell this story about the spider and Louise, no matter how terrible it makes me feel, as my attempt to save that spider on my garage door from the bottom of my shoe, from my personal failure to see my connection to her.

I’m not saying that any of this is easy and that we should always spare the spider. Like, don’t get me wrong, if a mosquito lands on my arm, I will smash it without a second thought. I am allergic to them, and also, I don’t want any of the viruses they might be carrying.

What I am saying, though, is that we should generally take more time and be more thoughtful about our interconnected actions and how they impact this world that we belong to—for we likely will never know our highest potential as humans until we begin to act as humanely as we are able.

In connection,

Ellie