When I was a kid my parents had a shower in the basement. It’s normal for my area, a lot of outdoor manual laborers back in the day so having a shower in the basement meant you could come home after work and not drag the stink and filth of work into the house. I didn’t do outdoor manual labor but I worked in restaurants, which brings with it its own stink and filth, and I also often got home at like 3am, so I used the basement shower om an effort to keep the house clean and not wake everyone else up. This meant that I had to establish something I called the Basement Spider Detente. We had tons of spiders down there, and I try to be respectful of everyone’s right to be alive absent any unwarranted aggression. The deal we reached was as follows: the entire basement and garage belonged to the spiders. They were free to roam, hunt, and generally spide however they saw fit. The shower was off-limits, though, and the penalty for coming within jumping distance of my naked bits was summary execution. I like to think that somewhere near Pittsburgh is a genetic line of cellar spiders that differ from the rest of their species in being extremely hydrophobic. I hope their line succeeds and confounds biologists in the centuries after I go to wherever it is we all must one day go.
Whats with the little gimp nook behind the fridge? The spiders in there are probably so big they have names.
I was trying to think of the words to describe that area and you came up with something much better than I could have.
I don’t know when I’ll get to use it but I’m stealing it.
Friend had cellar spiders in his bathtub in college. Of course they all had appropriate (i.e. stupid) names.
When I was a kid my parents had a shower in the basement. It’s normal for my area, a lot of outdoor manual laborers back in the day so having a shower in the basement meant you could come home after work and not drag the stink and filth of work into the house. I didn’t do outdoor manual labor but I worked in restaurants, which brings with it its own stink and filth, and I also often got home at like 3am, so I used the basement shower om an effort to keep the house clean and not wake everyone else up. This meant that I had to establish something I called the Basement Spider Detente. We had tons of spiders down there, and I try to be respectful of everyone’s right to be alive absent any unwarranted aggression. The deal we reached was as follows: the entire basement and garage belonged to the spiders. They were free to roam, hunt, and generally spide however they saw fit. The shower was off-limits, though, and the penalty for coming within jumping distance of my naked bits was summary execution. I like to think that somewhere near Pittsburgh is a genetic line of cellar spiders that differ from the rest of their species in being extremely hydrophobic. I hope their line succeeds and confounds biologists in the centuries after I go to wherever it is we all must one day go.
I love your verbification of “spide” — and your respect of our eight-legged allies.
My last house was infested with them, and not through lack of trying to get rid.
It was an old stone house and cold damp corners were everywhere.
I woke up with one of the leggy fuckers carrying an egg sac on my face and decided to move out there and then.
They bring luck, the spiders. I like them.
Wait… does that mean your friend never bathed so the spiders would live?
Yes and yes.
Cellar spiders have more relative square footage in their loft than we do in our entire apartments