{"id":639,"date":"2021-09-21T18:47:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-22T02:47:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=639"},"modified":"2021-09-21T18:48:52","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T02:48:52","slug":"in-which-i-meet-bob-and-keep-a-weather-eye-out-for-mrs-bob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/?p=639","title":{"rendered":"In which I meet Bob, and keep a weather eye out for Mrs. Bob"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Recently I was getting ready for a trip from the sleek, modern metropolis of Craig, Alaska, to the wilds of central Virginia. My sister Laura always stops by my little cottage before I come to make sure no possums have moved in, and this time she said casually, \u201cOh, by the way, there is a spider in your bathtub. I tried to catch it, but it ran down the drain.\u201d I asked if it were a large <\/em>spider. \u201cOh, no,\u201d said my sister. \u201cIts legs are very slender.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought no more about this shy, slender creature until my first night when I decided to take a shower. Squatting malignantly in my shower was, by my lights, a very large <\/em>spider. Its legs were indeed slenderer than some, but it was big enough to easily span the drain with its delicate extremities. It gave no sign of going anywhere, even down the drain (which would have comforted me not a bit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What did I do? Modern woman that I am, I shouted for my husband. He stuck his head in the bathroom, and said, \u201clet\u2019s call him Bob.\u201d Now, please understand, I had no intention of killing this spider, or allowing anyone else to. It\u2019s a complicated pathology, my attitude towards spiders, but my goal in life was to cover Bob with a large clear glass container (so I could see what he was doing), slide a piece of stiff carboard under the container, and with Bob thus contained I would rush to the door and fling him into the bushes. My husband suggested we wait until morning, because if the operation went south, Bob would be running all over the house all night, totally unsupervised. Then, he took a large coffee cup, placed it upside down over Bob, and assured me that he would be just fine until morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I fretted that poor Bob might die in the ensuing hours, from dehydration, asphyxiation, or simple despair, but he survived the night with no ill effects. (My sister explained to me that spiders can go dormant whenever conditions warrant.) Anyway, I know that Bob was fine, because in the early hours I slid the cardboard under the cup, made sure no tiny spider feet had gotten trapped, and flung him with great energy out the front door. I saw where he landed, and within a few minutes he had disappeared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I told Laura about this adventure, and that I was keeping an eye on the bathtub in case Bob\u2019s wife might still be hanging around, in which case I would quickly relocate her using the method I have described here. Laura told me about visiting the cottage when my father was living there. She had found a spider much larger than Bob on the bookshelf near my Dad\u2019s chair, quickly relocated it with the cup-and-cardboard method, and returned the next day to find it sitting on the chair. <\/em>She also expressed the opinion that both Bob and this other spider were probably females.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We tried to imagine such experiences from a lady spider\u2019s point of view. I can just see Bob looking around at where she has been so rudely flung, and muttering \u201cdammit, not again.\u201d Then she resets the pedometer app on her tiny cell phone and starts the long trek back home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I was getting ready for a trip from the sleek, modern metropolis of Craig, Alaska, to the wilds of central Virginia. My sister Laura always stops by my little cottage before I come to make sure no possums have moved in, and this time she said casually, \u201cOh, by the way, there is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[71,13],"class_list":["post-639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-powhatan-virginia","tag-powhatan","tag-spiders"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=639"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":641,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639\/revisions\/641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rightasrainonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}