If the three of you are strange, I’m probably stranger. 🕷🕸🦟
On an Ignatian Retreat in Ridgefield, CT, July of 2005, I discovered a friendly and intelligent Brown house spider, a female who made her silken home in the overhead light at the top of the stairs to the chapel. On the first night I couldn’t sleep and decided to get a breath of fresh air outside. Upon re-entering, I saw movement in the lamp cover through a place where it was cracked and broken off. I named her Claudette. She was busy wrapping up a small moth, all the while staring at me, probably wondering what kind of spider I was, having only two eyes. Every night for the entire retreat, I captured an insect and fed it to Claudette. Mostly I half killed moths or mosquitoes that swarmed around the outside light at night. By the last day of the retreat, Claudette was very plump, indeed. I don’t know if she made an egg sac. I never saw a husband, but that’s not unusual because spiders often capture and eat their husbands if they don’t run fast enough after performing their duty. If Claudette did have spiderlings in the lamp, approximately 800 little ones were released in the building. Her descendants may very well live there to this day.
“The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.” ~Proverbs xxx; xxviii