There is a little spider that is living in the sink of one of our bathrooms. We have five bathrooms (an excessive amount, I know, they all came with the house). Nobody uses this bathroom. You would think we would, as it is tucked into the corner of a large mudroom, which you enter from our garage, but the water pressure in the toilet is super low, the sink is old and crumbly, there is a shower (no tub) with tile that has pink and baby blue flowers on it, and currently no shower curtain. However, the bathroom is quite large, so we use the room as storage for outdoor/scuba diving gear which is perfect, except it is wasted as a bathroom. It would cost us a lot to make it no longer a bathroom…you get the idea.

Side note – we wonder if the previous home owners used the bathroom after they were done mowing 2.6 acres? Or gave their dogs baths in the standup shower? We’re curious.

So this spider. I go in there every morning, as it is also where we store the dog food, and last week I jumped while reaching for the food because out of the corner of my eye, I saw the spider. In the sink.

I hate spiders. Well, not hate actually. I fear them. I know they are important as they eat other bugs in my home, so I should be thankful for their presence because it means flies, maggots, and other creepy crawlies aren’t here. The fear is that they will jump on my face. Or my arm. Or my chest or belly or leg or anywhere on my body and then start running around to further push me over the edge. As if they know exactly what to do to scare the shit out of me. Such an odd fear.

I am going to again digress a moment. Does anyone else think about people watching them at night? For example, when I take my dog outside at night, I take her on a leash otherwise she will bark and bark and bark. We have woods on our property and I always think, ‘what if someone is in the woods watching me right now?’ And then I think about that potential person watching me. THEY would have to go into my woods, sit there in the dark and wait and hope that someone comes out of the house to the backyard so they can scare them, or do whatever my brains thinks these creepy people would do. But…wouldn’t that be scary for them? Wouldn’t they sit there, alone in the dark, dark woods, wondering who is out there….watching them?

Back on track. So I saw this spider and for whatever reason, I didn’t kill it. We don’t use that sink. We don’t use that toilet. He/she isn’t harming anyone or anything and they’re keeping our bathroom/closet bug free. So I let it go and left.

Next morning, same thing. Went to feed the dog, turned on the light, jumped because said spider was hanging out in the sink. If I had to guess, a wolf spider. Fairly large (bigger than a quarter) but not SO big that I immediately screamed or smashed him/her.

And everyday since last week, that spider has been sitting in that sink when I turn the light on to get dog food. A few days ago, I blew air onto the spider to see if it would move. He/she scurried to the drain, didn’t go down it, but was poised at the top, ready to dive if needed.

I had scared him/her. I am scared of her him/her and they are scared of me.

Interesting.

This morning, no spider. I wonder if I scared it away forever? If they found a new home? If someone else in my family saw it and turned on the water and drowned it? I don’t know. Maybe it was sleeping in?

I have found myself thinking about that spider throughout the day and why I didn’t immediately kill it. I killed a huge centipede on my wall the other day. They are also carnivores and eat other bugs but for whatever reason, I didn’t hesitate to murder him/her. Smooshed them with my husband’s Adidas slide. I get goosebumps just thinking about centipedes and all of their legs. Ugh! So why kill the centipede and not this spider?

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Time has passed and it is now over a week since I last saw the spider. Makes me kind of sad. Every time I go in to get dog food, I look for him/her but they haven’t been there. I know spiders don’t live very long…just looked it up…a male wolf spider’s lifespan is 1 year, females = 2-3 years…according to butterflies.org, a-zanimals.com, and National Geographic. I don’t think it died.

I realize our bathroom probably does not contain enough bugs for said spider, so maybe they wandered? Hopefully, they found a way outside, into the garden where there is a plethora of food? A door to the outside is mere steps from the bathroom, so it is possible. But clearly the spider is no longer living in the sink.

What have you found yourself doing lately that you question? And what reasoning have you determined for said behavior?

I chose not to kill a spider, but rather to see what happens if I let it live. Why? I don’t truly know. I think I simply wanted to see how long it would remain in our sink and what it would do. It stayed for five days, and every time I moved, it would skitter to the drain and hang out, close to its escape. What I learned is that it is just as afraid of me as I am afraid of it.

And maybe that’s it, that’s the lesson.

That there are those out there who are just as _____ as I am. Fill in the blank with scared, curious, friendly, kind, mean, hungry, tired…you get the idea. Maybe, we’re all more alike than we think. Maybe what I’m thinking, others are too. In this super bifurcated (good god, don’t you just love that word? Sounds trashy, nasty, crazy but it isn’t!) world of ours, maybe, just maybe, we’re connected. But until we pause, and give space for others, we won’t know. We can’t know. We’ll never know.

Choose to respond to something in a different way today. See what happens.

And maybe, just maybe, you’ll make friends with a spider.