A little background for the uninitiated (and I’ve plagiarized freely from my previous writings to construct this history). Two years ago, we hosted a European garden spider in our kitchen. The spider Blanche Ingram, who started out perhaps the size of a lentil, soon achieved formidable proportions. Hence her name, which comes from the scene in Jane Eyre where Mr. Rochester attempts to make Jane jealous by pretending to court Lady Blanche Ingram. The lady is tall, dark, and handsome, with a "magnificent bust." Singing the praises of this formidable armful, Rochester tells the puny and delicate Jane, "She's a strapper!" As was the spider Blanche Ingram as she emerged, double in size, from her first molt. And that was only the beginning.
Blanche Ingram lived in an empty picture frame, snacking on (successively, as she grew) fruit flies, flour moth larvae, flour moths, and earwigs (hand fed with sadistic glee). Finally, we bought her mealworms as the weather grew cold and the wildlife disappeared. But any one who’s read Charlotte’s Web will know that a spider’s life ends with the coming of winter (or possibly too many mealworms), and one day, Blanche Ingram had discreetly crept off. So sad.
Fast-forward to the topic of this post. A few weeks ago, I noticed a tiny garden spider in one of my library windows. (Library. Lah-di-dah) Or rather, I noticed, on the window sill, the telltale signs of a spider who intends to stay put—little black dots, probably deliquesced fruit flies (possibly spider poo, but I don’t intend to investigate.) Sure enough, there was a tiny dot of garden spider in the window frame. And oh, yeah, there was a dead housefly. Given the relative sizes of the spider (sub-lentil) and the fly (fly), I am optimistic about her chances. Already I can spot her across the room (a tiny speck from that distance, but still enough to block light), and she has been christened The Spider Mae West. Another strapper. Next year, maybe Jane Russell.