Wolf Spiders!

Lying in the dark with my ears on full alert, I could hear them scurrying across the garish orange nylon of the parachute that hung from the ceiling above us. That bedroom could have doubled as a wedding chapel for skydivers.  By day, it conjured images of a bright sky, stiff winds providing buoyancy, hair blowing into squinting eyes. But in the humid night, as black as the caves we used to explore in Limestone County, those damn wolf spiders ran all over the canopy like they owned it. They had ruled over that remote, rustic cabin, had it all to themselves before we moved in the week prior.  I could hear their feet as they scurried around in seemingly random directions , alien hordes, erratic and empowered by the damp night, bent on some kind of hellish crusade. But to be fair, we were never bitten, crawled on, yes, just after sleep made us still and unguarded, but never bitten.

Here’s an exercise in control for you. I walked the dirt path to our well with two five-gallon plastic buckets liberated from some construction site. We had no indoor plumbing so I had to hand pump the ten gallons of Sulphur water to bring back inside and heat in a large pot on the propane stove. After I wrestled a huge galvanized tub in from outside, Carla’s wash tub was in the kitchen, which was also the living room of that rectangular cabin. It was worth the trouble, I liked to watch her bathe, it all felt so natural.

  

The parachute bedroom was upstairs on the tiny second floor. I think the wolf spiders liked the damp breeze that swept stale attic air from one eve window through the other, as much as we did. They would run and pause, listening to and salivating over the banquet of Cicadas and tree frogs singing frenzied love songs just outside. A crush of Times Square revelers, immersed in their own summertime Rumspringa, and exuding a New Year’s Eve desperation, a delirious abandon, programmed to somehow know that tonight is the night, because for them, everything changes tomorrow.

One hundred yards from the house, next to the well, there was a coffin-like, concrete bunker, poured into the ground next to the hand pump and covered with a wooden roof. Someday it would hold an electric pump. Sitting my empty buckets to one side, I lifted the lid slowly to get a peek and see if it held any standing water, as was often the case when debris seeped in and stopped up the drain. It was about a quarter full. Propping the roof up with a nearby stick like some cheesy animal trap you’ve seen in cartoons, I slowly bent over and slid down into the water, crouching down to sweep the drain clear of rotting muck. At that moment, when I bent over, too close to that seven inches of fetid water, the roof support stick buckled and the top slammed shut. Suddenly plunged into total darkness, something rained down on me from above. Hundreds of somethings, actually. Wolf Spiders.  Apparently they had set up colonies on the dark underside of that subterranean pump-less pump house roof.  I squatted, frozen in place, as they scampered through my hair and over my face, trying their best to go down the collar of my T-shirt, exploring behind my ears and the space between my fingers, all in a frenzy over their abrupt and violent awaking. Like hundreds of electrified mouse skeletons, undead and crazed on spider Methamphetamine, they were searching for the enemy. 

I didn't want them to point an accusing finger at me.

Having studied entomology as a kid, the few things I knew about Wolf Spiders flashed through my mind as I forced myself to freeze. Unlike web builders, Wolf Spiders are hunters, and very fast, able to cover two feet per second over short distances as they chase down their prey. Using their strong pincers to crush their victims, they can easily inflict sharp stinging bites on humans. Although they have a good vision, they cannot discriminate between a finger and an insect, and can grow to a size of up to 1.2 inches. That is the body size only - if the legs are included the total length of a Wolf Spider can be almost four inches. But I remembered that they are rarely found in groups, so as they bolted unpredictably from my eyelids to neck, scampering around my lips and nostrils, pushing to get inside of both, all I could think was that apparently they had never gotten the memo about no gang activity. 

Of course, I wanted out, immediately, but knew it wouldn’t be smart to move quickly. The arachnid hordes would know that I wasn’t just an inert object, that they had found the enemy. They wouldn’t be happy about that, or maybe they would. Moving in almost imperceptible slow motion, I reached over my head and put the fingers of both hands very gently on the underside of the roof above me. As I started to straighten my legs, pushing upward, light and fresh air flooded in and gave me hope that I might live another day. At the half way point, the roof fell backward and slammed up against the pump, bouncing aggravated wolfies into the air and causing them to reach a whole new level of crazy. Fanatic, eight-legged zealots darted around the inverted roof, me, and were now swimming in the water at my feet. They quickly found my legs and started to climb out of the water and up my pants. Knowing that slow movements would no longer serve a purpose, I vaulted out of the pump house, jumping into a violent scarecrow dance as my feet hit the ground. \

I immediately began slapping and smashing my hands against my legs, chest, everywhere that spiders had gotten under my shirt and pant legs. I knew I had to really pulverize them, or they would bite me in their death throes, so I tensed each body part while pinching, crushing and mashing each moving lump under the fabric. Stripping down as quickly as I had jumped out of that spider coffin, I jumped up and down repeatedly on top of my pants and T-shirt, both of them now sprinkled liberally with chewing gum sized pockets of Wolf Spider goo.

Carla thought that I was simply out getting water, so when I walked back in through the door of the cabin, nude, water-less, with red welts and mashed bits of hairy exoskeletons dripping from my chest and legs, she didn’t know what to think. I looked like someone who had just been through, exactly what I had just been through.

After cleaning up with water from our drinking water container and putting on fresh jeans and shirt, we decided to drive into Chauncy and get a steak at Abdella’s Bar. Mainly, I needed a drink, lots of drinks, actually.

That remote cabin was a perfect hideaway for our first year of marriage, but it sure was nice to move back to civilization the following Springtime and have a real bathroom with faucets that spit out hot or cold water on demand. All you have to do is turn a knob or two, and no wolf spiders waited in ambush when the lights went out.

Pretty damn sweet!