I hate seeing animals die. I hate seeing animals suffer in any way. I can’t stand the site of it. Tears come to my eyes when fictional dogs, horses, or even those bitchass dolphins are killed off in movies; yet when there’s a bloodbath of human destruction and death I’m totally fine with it. Maybe you’d even catch me cheering it on. Gotta love society today.

That being said, I can’t kill anything, no matter what… even bugs. I don’t have the heart for it. I’m a big baby. One time during Sophomore year of college I let four or five cockroaches live in my desk. They didn’t bother me, I didn’t bother them. Well, they did bother me, a lot. But I still couldn’t bring myself around to get rid of them. I even decided to name them. Actually, since I had rarely seen more than one at a time, I think I just named them all Mario. Good times.

Bugs can torture me, they can climb all over me, they can live with me, eat, breed, enjoy basking the fruits of my room, yet I am helpless to resist them. So when the spider nation decided to wage war on me and my way of life, they basically had already won. It wasn’t me directly that they attacked. They hadn’t crawled in through the windows or anything; they hadn’t even entered my apartment at all. What they did attack though, was my main means of transport: my bike. Left outside and exposed to the elements, it was an easy target for the eight legged beasts.

It was around July when the spider webs began popping up all over the place. A normal enough site, spiders in the summer. I had never had bad experiences with spiders, or spider webs. I had stayed away from them, and they generally would stay away from me. One day, however, I caught a spider building its web between my bike, and the column that it was lying against. No big deal. I moved my bike and destroy the fledgling web, knowing the little guy could easily build another one. The next day I go to ride my bike again. What I saw stopped me in my tracks. There was a fully developed, foot long spider web in same place as last time, between my bike and the column. Only the night before had I returned the bike to its parking spot, clean, yet there it was; A big and full-bodied spiderweb with a big fat spider in the middle.

“These fuckers build fast”, I thought to myself. I stood there for literally five minutes. I didn’t want to destroy this spider’s web. I thought of how much energy it must have taken the little guy to make a web this big. I thought about how he had probably just finished it and must be really tired and hungry. I thought if I had destroyed the web, it would probably die. The moral dilemma gripped me for what seemed like an eternity. However, not willing to miss work on the account of a spider, I very reluctantly moved my bike and destroyed the web, making sure not to physically hurt the spider. The little guy never saw it coming. He scampered off and dissapered in a flash. “I’m so sorry” I said out loud, “Choose a better spot next time, little buddy”. I thought that would probably be the end of it, but boy was I wrong. Little had I know, I had triggered an endless assault that would drive me to near insanity.

The next day there was another one, and another one the next day, and the next. There were times where I would use my bicycle two, maybe three times a day, and every time I would have to clear a new web off my bike. It continues on to this day. I literally can be off my bike for five minutes and I can be sure there is a new critter crawling around encompassing my bike in its web. Needless to say I am getting annoyed, especially since I still don’t want to kill the little bastards. I have to use other ways to coerce them off my bike. Mainly, all I can do is either shake my bike up and down trying to force it off, or try and blow it away. These are the only tools I have against them.

Despite my amazing anti-spider tactics *cough*, the spider still sometimes manages to scurry off into some small crevice on the bike, forcing me to ride with the spider still crawling around. It’s the worst. This happens to me so much that I have begun to imagine spiders on my arms and legs, spinning their web on me while riding. I find myself swapping my legs at the tiniest sensation, wiping off spider webs that aren’t there. Sometimes I feel pain like I had just been bitten, when it is nothing. Fuck I don’t know! How am I supposed to know if these spiders are poisonous or not? I’m afraid!

Hope is not too far off, however. The end of summer is in sight. All I have to do is wait till mid september and I’ll be free of them… Yes…free…

I have made a graphic representation of my troubles for you all to see. It conveys my feelings well.

If any of you have any advice as to get these spiders to stop covering my bike in their sticky web hell, I’d love to hear it. If not, then pray for me.

Until next time!

-Maxim