Ammi Midstokke: The truth about spiders

I don’t know a lot about insects beyond my vague research dedicated to convincing them to stay outside. I have also learned if you suck up enough stink bugs in an industrial vacuum, they’ll form a survivalist union with the spiders you’ve siphoned into its belly. When you try to empty it months later, the whole mess will writhe and spread like a living puddle of dog hair with legs, then haunt your dreams for weeks.

This knowledge keeps me up at night, along with the mystery of how such large creatures make it beyond my screens and doors and windows and stomping feet and hysteria, or decide this particular indoor environment has anything to offer other than certain death.

Of all the mysteries surrounding these small and fascinating beings, none has baffled me more than their propensity to leave a leg behind.

I have more than one friend who has a curious fixation on the phenomena of the Lone Shoe. I know you’ve seen them out there: Some wayward sole on a sidewalk, a lost lace-up on a highway shoulder, a misplaced soccer cleat on the sideline. I’ll admit the singular shoe is worthy of a collection of curious essays, but one can assume there are other shoes available to take its place on the feet of the wearer.

I’ve left lots of things behind: Keys, bad dates, Swiss Army knives at airport security, the belief that America is capable of meaningful dialogue. Yet it never occurred to me that something once thought necessary or vital to my existence for some reason could be voluntarily amputated.

Insects use a process called autotomy to remove a limb. They induce a powerful muscle contraction that separates the limb at a joint. There are a number of reasons they might do this. The limb could be injured and impairing their movement. The limb could be prone to infection that could spread. Or they might have sacrificed it to a predator. Luckily for them, they tend to have a fair number of the things.

I often find these limbs on the windowsill, so I think they get damaged in the screens. One leg, left behind, no less creepy than when it still moved and was attached. To my horror, I also find them on my husband’s side of the bed some mornings.

I’m suspicious they are finding safe harbor in his beard to smuggle themselves indoors, only to be concussed by his subsequent snoring. Delirious, they must struggle free from his nest of hair, then run for the edge of the bed, only to have him flop a limp arm, thereby pinning them by the exoskeleton to my sheets until they are forced to decide: Wait on these beautiful floral linens for possible death or dash for delayed death by windowsill or shop-vac?

I have clear memories of the early days of Covid, when bizarre times and differing values had many of us pruning our social bushes and sometimes family trees. I took an intentional pause from surface relationships and snipped ones that had become gangrenous. To maintain my faith in humanity or a belief that my friends were still sane, I deleted Facebook. My world became small in the way a snow globe does; everything visible and contained had meaning.

Once again, I find myself looking at the body of my life and wondering what sickly appendages must be left behind in order for me to continue thriving. I wonder the same for our communities. What misunderstandings and beliefs are we clutching that justify the unjustifiable? What stubborn stances do we take or press upon others, even as these poison the lifeblood of society?

The toxin of social media. The vitriol of internet slacktivism or the compulsion to respond. The addiction to gratuitous gore and violence and tragedy and blame, blame, blame. The weakness to rely on information that merely affirms our existing beliefs, rather than challenging them. Validation, righteousness, virtue.

It is not people, communities, or demographics we must separate from. It is not religions, immigrants, the queer, the ill, the poor, the woke, the rich, the othered, the different.

The limb we must discard is the belief that some people have less value than others, that we must fear that which is different.

There is a spider with seven legs in my bathroom. He likes a spot on the tile just above a fern. While I shower, we converse about this truce as a product of our mutual courage. I’m still wary, of course, because I saw on the internet that spiders can grow 6 feet tall and attack one in their sleep. Or maybe that was Lord of the Rings. Equally reliable sources, in any case.

I know the real danger is my unwarranted fear and uneducated opinion that all spiders are venomous. Probably bloodthirsty. Amoral. I bet they vote for the other party, too. But I’m committed to getting to know this spider for who he is (though I have not inquired as to appropriate pronouns yet).

This one just seems to be eating the tiny flies that get inside. Maybe if I watch him for a while, I’ll learn something true about spiders. Maybe I’ll even learn to appreciate them.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted at ammim@spokesman.com