A Visit from Spider and Frog Pt. 1

With spring blowing up around us, it was time to do some spring cleaning around the yard and start getting ready for gardening. I was in the small shed next to the sugar shack. I looked in a large white pail that I had used in collecting maple sap and where I had also brined my fish for smoking. I had let it sit for a few days filled with water and a little vinegar and then emptied it and put it in the shed. Any excess water would have evaporated and it could be put away.

I reached to pick it up and quickly pulled my hand back to my body. Inside sat the largest spider I have ever seen in my life. A shock wave went through my whole body, that primal instinct that is connected to this creature. This eight legged, many eyed, hunter, trapper. Thinker. Survivor. Drinker of blood.

The spider lives outside the insects. The scientist says that the spider is closer to the crab under the water than he is to any creature that walks upon the earth.

I put the pail down and take a step back and look away. "That is the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life." These words just kept firing around in my head. I didn't want to look at it. But I couldn't keep my head up. I could feel my neck exposed.

There was something else in the pail. What was it? It wasn't that. Could it be? No. It couldn't be. But, it sure the hell looked like that. This time, I shivered. I'm sure that I made some expression, some sound. What the hell happened here?

I took a breath. A step forward and I peer cautiously and fully into the pail. It was the biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. And next to that glorious creature, the carcass of the second biggest fucking spider I have ever seen in my whole fucking life. I got the shivers again. What the hell happened here?

Yet, all my instinctual shivers and shocks could not overwhelm that sense of complete awe and wonderment of what I was seeing. I went through the list of the largest spiders I had ever seen in my whole life. The one at the putt putt golf course where my mother in law and our oldest son, then around 11  years old, played the greatest game of putt putt  golf in family history. That was the biggest one I could recall. This spider was much much bigger than that.

"Tansi, Spider. Ni Na Napayo". I then told the spider in English that I wanted to take its picture because it was so magnificent. I lifted my head and stepped back and out of the shed. I never took my eye off the edge of the pail.

I went into the house and grabbed my phone. I went back out, picked up the pail and took it outside. The spider just seemed to be watching me. I can't imagine what a creature like that must know. To survive to that size, it must be very old. How must it regard me?

I took a couple of photographs and turned the pail on its side. The giant spider skittered out and under the shed. I turned over the pail and examined the carcass but briefly. Who knows what happened here. Did they both fall into the pail somehow? Is one male and female? Is it one's past left behind.

The questions wash over as the fear did just moments ago. I feel the speed of life grab me again. I'm running out of time. I'm running out of time. I'm running out time.

That night frog comes to visit.

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