Lessons from the Woodpile

Alejandro Lucero | Non-Fiction

Another failed attempt to get caught up on homework; this time I blame the deadly black pearl who dropped into my egress window. When, I do not know. 

I must admit, I am not deathly afraid of spiders, but I do not like the thought of one, especially one so toxic, setting up camp close to the pillows my mind nests over. My laptop is propped up on the side of my bed, a centerpiece for a scatter of notebooks, handouts, and books assigned by my professors. The bottom right corner of the centerpiece reads 11:26 a.m. I am sitting in my wooden chair, which is meant to be in front of my desk. However, the desk is littered with old mail, old school work, and many other old memories. . . things I once worried about, like assignments I once procrastinated mixed with old bills which I eventually had to pay topped with photographs of loved ones I miss, especially my grandmother who I have not seen in 12 years. 

Perhaps, if I was focusing on finding well-sourced information on Poland during the Holocaust, I would have not seen the black widow walking clumsily over the surface of small rocks toward the screen of my window. 

There was no way for me to focus now. What if the widow burrowed its way beneath the rocks and found a gap to crawl through leading into my bedroom, or if the sleek spider flattened itself and made its way through the cracks in the wall? I remember my grandmother telling me how dangerous black widows are. She was outside loading pinewood into a wheelbarrow- taking only one piece at a time from the large pile. She had to inspect each piece of wood before she could allow it any closer to her home. The last time I helped her gather wood I was 10 years old. The large fields of alfalfa which surrounded her Sapello, New Mexico, home were more dry this year than ever before. This was the last year I lived with my grandparents. 

There are 32 known species of widow spider. The one tormenting my mind at the moment belongs to the Latrodectus family. This is surely a female spider; she is black and shiny as India ink. She presents a red hourglass on her belly when she is cradled upside down in the web she has began to weave. She is particularly a member of the Latrodectus Hesperus subspecies. This subspecies of the black widow is most commonly found in the Western region of North America, which is most relevant to my own whereabouts. The main reason I am staring at this beautiful creature, almost paralyzed, is because of the bite. A bite from this pretty lady may not kill me, but can definitely be a big problem. Being taken to the hospital with wincing aches and pains, and falling even further behind in school is not my priority. Latrodectism is the condition caused by the neurotoxin latrotoxin in this widow’s supersized venom glands. I can not have this beautiful spider anywhere near me.
 

The next day, the black widow is still in my window. I have watched petrified as she built a silky stretch of road for herself to move quickly from the edge of my windowsill to the ladder meant for me to climb if a fire was to engulf my bedroom. She is hanging with her red stomach to the sky on the pole of the bottom rung of this small escape ladder.
 

I feel that we are looking at each other. This cannot be since her vision is not very good. All the widow sees is a blurred and distorted image, as if she is looking at me through the steamy fog of a glass shower door; however, she knows I am there by the vibrations of my movements, as if she can feel the tension coursing through my body, each jolt at a time. 

I am inside my room on the other side of the the black widow’s new habitat. Her walls are grey sheets of wavy metal, about five feet high from the scatter of stones she stumbled across the day before. Her ceiling is a crisscrossed piece of black spraypainted metal, which I can lift up if I need to escape my home. She can not escape, not without my help, but I can not get too close to her. She could hurt me. The old peanut butter jar I have had waiting by the window since yesterday, holes punched through the lid by an old knife, could fall out of my grasp leaving the gorgeous widow to drop to my hand, immediately sending me to the E.R.
 

Regardless of my many irrational fears, I open the window screen and set the jar on the rock-covered ground beneath the innocent widow who is still floating next to the escape ladder. In the corner of my room is a slender three foot pole; one end has pinchers, the other, a handle that when I squeeze makes the pincers on the opposite end meet together, the perfect tool for an obese couch potato. My goal is to grab one of the eight slender legs of the widow and drop her into the jar like the claw machine game in a grocery store lobby. But my grip is too tight. Her paper thin shiny black skin pops as soon as my extended claw clasps her body and her white egg sac breaks on my pinchers like a punctured bubble of snot. 

Female black widows are known to kill and consume their mate shortly after reproduction. Although, this is only true some of the time. They usually save their worthy venom to hunt other insects. This widow never wanted to harm me. She probably wanted to get far, far, away from me. It usually takes much prodding to provoke the shy black widow to bite. I could have very well gotten closer and made sure she made it safely to the jar. Which I could have opened and left on its side on my walk to school for her to leave when she was ready.

I close the window tightly, turn around and walk towards the door. My fear got the best of me and the price was the life of a beautiful soon to be mother. The black widow is a misunderstood spider. 

In most cases, a bite from a black widow is not deadly unless the victim is elderly, an infant, or already ill. However, I did not know any of this until it was too late, and I feel terrible for popping her body open like a green pea from my Grandmother’s garden, between my teeth. Grandma always told me never to eat peas that have webbing on their pod.