Uninvited Guests

 

I don't see them, but the youngun does. He becomes more uneasy. Scratchy in his skin, until he can bear them no longer.

"Take them out. Take them out!"

He is white and shaking.

"Take them out."

He means of course the uninvited guests: the spiders.

He has by this time become away of their every move. Tracking each one to its lair with an unerring radar.

But by this time air traffic control has gone.

The spiders oblivious, are humming their soft spidery tunes as I notice them for the first time. They are thin creatures on thinner articulated legs. There is one in every corner of the kitchen. One in every high corner of the window. I catch them in a wine glass as they jerk awake from mesmeric sleep, and set them loose in the garden.

In the small garden room I find the fattest. It has gorged on many tiny flies that have been attracted to the table lamp. In the darkest corner beside the desk I discover a myriad of webs, a spider larder in which it has stored suspended tiny meat.

The spiders outside have broader bodies and are firmer in shape. I fear this one will now starve. It steps onto a leaf which does not bend beneath its weight and disappears.

Seven spiders have been thrown out.

A quick whisk around inside with the feather duster and all the cobwebs have gone.

"All gone. You can come back now," I call, hoping that the spiders will not think I mean them.

How do they get in?