Night Visitors

There are spiders in my bathroom, for there is an errant split between the screen and its frame that for some reason, gives off an aura of a hey lookit this to arachnids.  They think there are bugs in here, more available and juicier than the nitwitty flimsy moths that live by the thousands outside these brick towers.  Aha, they posit, I will beat the competition and live like royalty on the insect harvest inside this bathroom, so I must scooch my fat abdomen through the slit and build, build, build.

The days have been heated, and besides, I like an open window in the damp bathroom; I have told you of the brown, stemmed, 4-inch mushrooms that grew from the cabinet base one year.  Fresh air right off the lake, what could be better, especially when night falls and the breeze spills over sills?  To repair the screen would run a mere $27, but I am a bigger nitwit than those moths when it comes to removing it from a window many, many stories high.  It pops and twists a bit and temporarily hangs out suspended, and could put a dent in anyone's cranium and then boy would I catch it.

I did manage to get one other damaged screen out, the one where the spiders were clambering into My Bedroom and the patrol cats thought they were doing me a favor by bringing half-beat up spiders big as walking olives to my pillow.  Here!  Look!  Cat love!  The wiggling and the did I feel something brush my cheek (yes I did) overrode the nervous concern of accidental screenicide.  You know when you don't want to drop something and fear is attached, how strong your hands get?  I had imprints of crisscross screen in my palms and fingers for a day afterwards, plus there was the fussy worry of a cat jumping out of a ten-story window when I wasn't looking, and of course the re-insertion of the fixed screen back into the window without killing anyone.  I hate heights, so an added attraction was the possibility of a sudden gust of gravity sucking me out of the window to the pavement below.  The world I live in, you must stop by sometime.

But back to the bathroom; this brand of spider comes out at sunset, and busily weaves webs that would make the angels cry, they are so beautiful.  If you are a big spider, I am sorry, it is over quickly and my arm is powered by whack and accuracy.  If you are a smallish spider, I am also sorry in a different way for they are as industrious as the large ones, but are still babies.  They get to live an extra day, and I often direct them with paper towels back to the separation in the screen, so maybe they even get to escape.  Really, I need to even out the policy and develop a spider relocation process.  They get such a hard rap, and the species that clings to the walls here is said to be mild tempered and only wants a bug dinner.

The other day, one connected to a houseplant I keep in the bathroom window.  It was fascinating to watch, and the water drops from the showerhead caused beads of liquid to hang upon one of the tethering lines of this tiny web.  The spider went to delicate work, and tiptoed its way over to the strand; it then slowly went to each droplet and broke the surface tension with one poke, causing the water to run down, released, with no further pull on the trapeze wires.  After the three globules were cleared, the spider went back to the center to wait for maybe a fluttery lunch.  Admirable, efficient, and to steal from E. B. White, "Some spider".

Nonetheless, if the window has been left open past sunset, turning on the bathroom light causes whomever has eased their eight-legged self in to startle.  I imagine having as many eyes as they do magnifies the flash from the new-fangled instant start fluorescents even more than it does for me.  We all jump.  It just those legs, why the heck are humans upset by so many legs?  I'll get over it.

This weekend, there is another night visitor that comes round every year, the Perseid meteor shower.  I have never seen a firsthand event, but my friend saw three curve through the atmosphere as she walked her dog around ten o'clock in the evening at the city park.  The moon has been waxing gibbous, culmination tonight, washing out some of the show by its own full brilliance, yet many of the meteors and fireballs are bright enough to be evident.  Look to the northeast, for best luck.  Take the kids out in their jammies.  One year my son, his friend, and his friend's naturalist father set an alarm for three a.m., and waited out in sleeping bags to view.  Worth the groggy next day.

I have watched for signs of summer change, longing for cooler temperatures as we pass through mid-August.  The mushroom species Boletus bicolor is now appearing in woods, and makes a nice addition to soup.  Through the week, I saw: the red-tailed hawk sitting on a lamppost overlooking the route to downtown, and a sudden wash of a storm melt clay into a slurry, exposing fossil remains of creatures from before time; I saw the ordinance of a spider web, and a fish jump to catch a lacewing dinner.  I saw in the darkest of night a bat wing along a river, and a man release strings of helium balloons into the pitch black depth of the evening.  As they bobbled quickly upwards and spun in circular drafts, he used a flashlight to illuminate them as they rose beyond what could be seen.  I saw his face and the focused tension in his arms and spine as he reached the flashlight up, not wanting to lose them, wanting someone not there to see, and know, still. His eagerness and despair combined into the paradoxical effect of a lifetime compacted into a solitary moment.  I wondered if anyone else looked up to the sky besides our little group that evening, to meet the sight of balloons chasing each other as if they were birds, traveling in a far away story.

Over in the east, cumulus clouds hang near the horizon; to the west, the sun is beginning descent; maybe tonight will be the night to see a meteor, you will hear hoopla if I do.  The early evening spiders are beginning to spin webs outside the window, each with its little property and fence, they will chase the smaller spiders if feeling intruded upon.  The farmers from the morning markets are home at supper now, while the rest of us are enjoying the fruits and vegetables of summer they offered.  The first apples are here, the corn is rampant, and early potatoes have been boiled for potato salad, now cooling in the refrigerator.

Fold yourself into the night, it welcomes us as much as the day will with dawn.  There is more to see in the night sky, go get some binoculars if you like, many work with excellent precision for the same price that would only purchase a poorer telescope.  Take a good look at the moon, and invest in the same curiosity that sped other scientists before you to burn with curiosity and invention.  Let sleep come then, while you weave stories to tell in that space of time between waking and oblivion.  Sleep in this good night, peacefully, with clear hearts.