Oh What a Web

Every June in Los Angeles, due to a mixture of conditions of the ground being soaked with water, the air hovering moist with fog and moderate temperatures, we are faced with the same awful thing. Spider webs. Everywhere. And not the big lacey ones you used to see as a kid up in the mountains or hanging off the eve of your house.

No, these June Webs of Los Angeles are just thin invisible strings hanging straight down from the trees. Or one little string going across the sidewalk from where to where, I do not know. I don't care how effectively the factions of our climate have conspired to make this phenomena a possibility, I so wish the makers of this terrible gore would leave the area.

Every other night, I have the great pleasure of walking my little dog. She loves it and very often it's my only outdoor excursion for the day. How much nicer it would be if the excursion did not include being wrapped in sticky, soft silk every time I pass under a tree.

It's always disgusting. Many people hate these web collisions because their thoughts immediately turn to, "Where's the spider?!" For me, it has nothing to do with that. I've never had a spider land on me after I've walked into a web so I never fear their arrival on my person. What I simply loathe is the soft and sticky feeling of the single strand of spider silk sticking to my hair or my forehead or my neck or behind my ears, or the worst, in one of my eyelashes. I go into some sort of panicked wiping away. And every time I do, if I wipe it off from say, my forehead, I still feel a piece behind my ear. Then, I think there's some in my hair. And sometimes there is. And it can often happen, the more you wipe, the more it feels like the strands are sticking to you and no matter how maniacally you try to wipe yourself clean, you will be covered with a thin strand of spider web for the rest of your life.

Two nights ago, I was walking Miss La Pooch, and as I walked under a Jacaranda tree just one house away, a spider web, long, vertical and with an industrial strength thickness, stuck to me from my hair down to my right leg. The strand was so strong and attacked to me so aggressively I could actually here the silk crackling as it conformed to the contours of my tormented body. It was like something out of a horror movie. It took me over five minutes of wiping to feel like I was no longer encased in the wretched string. I must have looked insane. At the same time, I must have looked totally normal for someone in Los Angeles on the sidewalk in June. I am still undone and wonder if I will ever recover.

Of course, spiders have to eat. And I have nothing against one animal eating another one. I just wish they wouldn't do it in my neighborhood. Call me a specie-ist, but I really just want to live with my own kind.