Cane Spiders

Cane spiders. I used to photograph them, wondrous creatures of epic size, out on the lanai of a home we rented on a visit to the islands. Ah, the wonder, Oh, how exotic. I never dreamed I’d be living amongst them. Part of the aftershock of moving to Hawaii and the “I can’t believe we actually live here.” is the next step in recovering a sense of reality, “I can’t believe that people have been living with these things. How do they do it?”

When a cane spider is in the house, you know it by the elastic cord that connected a ceiling light fixture with a chair, and now with you. When the cane spiders move into your garden, you are restricted from certain areas by a force field that only a machete can really clear. Otherwise, you’re in for a vertical trampoline experience that certainly includes residual threads dangling from your hair.

I’ve wondered if I could stop using hair styling products and simply get all my locks into place, then back into a web to hold everything in place for the day. It would probably be a great hair net, if it didn’t remove my hair when I tried to go on to work. There would also be the problem of gathering other items in the hair web during the day, like dust, food particles, small children, and electric scooters. I wonder how the webs would work on the end of a swiffer. It would probably pick up the furniture to move it so you could dust.

I’m all for trying to live amiably with my neighbors, whether human or otherwise. They may not, however, move in with us. When a website springs up in the house, I search out the culprit. Then I tell my husband where it is. We used to try to shoo them outside to their domain. That’s like trying to put electricity back into the socket. Now, he goes in with a magazine or a novel to smash the beast. Slamming noises are followed by a silence. If he comes out without the literature and I still hear smashing noises, it means the spider has the tome.

By now you know how to find my house. It’s the one with what looks at first glance like laundry strung about at random, but turns out to be a collection of webs that are full with hair, swiffer covers, the head off of a weedeater, outdated magazines, a toilet brush, and butterflied paperback novels.