My Spider

When my wife moved out after the divorce, she left her gas grill on the back deck.  This was ok with me,  except that because of all the cooking that had been done outside, it was atracting flies!  It didn't matter how well we cleaned the grill or the deck, the flies just kept coming.

I spent alot of time out on the deck with fly swatter in hand, hoping to send some flies to heaven....or to the other place, if they were bad flies!   I must have killed hundreds of flies at the beginning of summer.

A few years ago, I built a roof over the oil tank which is near the deck, on one side, next to the house.  Early this summer, as I was swatting flies one day, I noticed a tiny little spider, spinning a web, under the roof, and between the oil tank and the side that supports the roof. Normally, I would get rid of the web to descourage spiders from coming back to that spot but all of a sudden, a light bulb lit up in my head and I am thinking that this could be a a great pesticide free bug control system!   So I let it be and then I watched as he got his first fly!  The spider was hiding up under the eaves and as soon as that fly got stuck, the spider raced down that web on turbo speed, grabbed that fly and went back up inside the eaves to enjoy his freshly caught supper!    

Over the course of the summer, I would periodically glance at the web to see what was on the dinner menu for the evening and I saw everything from mosquitoes to hornets, to flies, to a dragonflie and when I saw that dragonflie, I had to discipline the spider. You see, the state releases dragonflies in the summer for natural mosquitoe control. Dragonflies can eat 15 times their body weight in mosquitoes. Strangely enough, I never saw another dragonflie on the spiders web.

There was another time when I saw so many bugs on the web that they were weighting it down and breaking the delicate strands and I was wondering how the spider was going to eat all that food so I peeked up at the spider and I noticed he had a buddy with him!  He had invited a friend over for supper to share in his bounty!  I only saw that second spider that one time.  

So here it is, August and the summer is almost over.  For the past few months, we haven't had to worry about any pests, at all so today I was thinking, that tiny little spider must be morbidly obese by now, from eating so much over the past few months so I thought I'd take a look.  I peeked up under the roof and OMG!  He was the size of a tarantula !!! I kid you not!  

I have alot of work to do today and here I am writing a silly story about a spider. This is a true story, by the way, I seldom write fiction.  

I hope y'all have a great week!

God Bless!