Editor’s note: a previous version of this article referenced the song “Cotton Eye Joe.” It has come to our attention that this song has racist connotations. We apologize for referencing a piece of work that has caused historical harm and negatively references enslaved people. The reference has now been removed.
By: Hailey Miller, Staff Writer
Ah, do you smell that? Spring is in the air. Achoo! What’s not to love about the downpour of endless showers and a blossom-budding, bug-infested season? All the pollen, creepy-crawlies, and hay fever really put a spring in your step.
There’s this spider in my house and he acts like he owns the place. The dude thinks this is his luxurious lair. The least he can do is contribute to paying his taxes since it is tax season after all. You know how expensive it is to keep this place afloat? Never mind the unneeded expense of uninvited guests giving me the unwanted chills. Not to scare him from his slumber of a chilly winter, but, either pay up and leave me alone, or get out and gallop around the garden where you belong.
Why is it that spiders assume they have the automatic right to reside in my residence even when hibernation season is over? C’mon, there’s a million places Sir Spidey could go, a million gardens he could roam, and he chooses to chill on my wall, my ceiling, dangling a web in plain sight? I mean, I am flattered, but really, he gives me the ick. He could be outside chillin’ with all the bees pollinating the flowers and buzzin’ about the trees, but he would rather stare at a wall all day. While I’m over here living a nightmare and trying to move heaven and earth to avoid him at all costs, curating a high-class Home Alone escape plan, he couldn’t be more unfazed. Isn’t there anything more exciting for him than watching paint dry and giving me a heart attack every time our paths cross? Watch me literally paint a wall just to get him out of the way.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that he probably has a bestie roaming around. You can’t tell me he’s in one room, and then I go a few rooms over, and there’s the same spider again. There’s no way. Is he Spider-Man? Buddy boy simply cannot move that fast. He has clearly been keeping Sir Spidey a secret. The two are probably making out in a web somewhere, having a spring fling, and all their spidey children will suddenly appear — one for each square inch of my house. Oh, what a joy! It gives me shivers.
As if mustering up the courage to make eye contact with him and somehow manage not to touch him while I put him out in the garden isn’t bad enough, I now have to contend with the matter of sneeze-inducing pollen that will immediately activate all the hay fever in the land. Let’s just hope his spidey spouse is an illusion, and I won’t have to do the same with Sir Spidey, too.
Don’t tell me I’m the only one who scrambles to shut the door faster than a lightning bolt from the downpour of spring showers every time I go outside, just to eliminate the risk of more stealthy spiders taking up residence in my unwanted-bug-infested basement. It ain’t spring unless you keep watch like a hawk. You’ve got to scout out all the creepy-crawlies like a detective while sneezing up a storm at every speck of pollen, questioning whether every edge of a spider web is a hallucination (it’s probably not).
Just channel the good energy of the cherry blossoms and you’ll get through spring just in time for the humid, sticky, wild-fire blazen, climate change crisis of summer. But until then, happy April showers, and may they bring you May flowers — and even more bugs to boot! Buzz, are those the mosquitos already?
