Charlotte's Web...of Death, Destruction, and Fear

Did you grow up reading the beloved children's story of "Charlotte's Web"? I certainly did. I read the story and loved the animated movie. I used to always rent the movie at the local library. However, now that I am an adult I realize that the author lied to us all. He portrayed Charlotte as some selfless, giving spider who saved a pig's life. Yes, that is very sweet and endearing, but let me tell ya gang....spiders are the devil.

There is a spider whom I refer to as Charlotte, that lives outside and above our front door. (And no she is not a pet, we are not that pathetic!). In the daytime she is completely hidden. I have no idea where she retreats! But at night time it is a completely different story. Charlotte is out and about weaving her miraculous web above our door. I will give it to her, it is a darn good web. It is wide, symmetrical, and I am sure quite beautiful in the eyes of a spider, but to me it is a trap of death, destruction, and fear. Each night she expands her web, but she also likes to vandalize our property (this would be the destruction aspect). We have a mailbox on the bricks next to our door. It has a little metal flap that you can raise and close to conceal your mail. Charlotte loves to play tricks on us and cover the entire mailbox with web....every...single....cotton pickin' night! Every morning when I leave for work I see her web of filth on my mailbox. The poor mail man has to destroy the web just to put mail in our mailbox. I am convinced she does this because she knows it annoys me.

I am not fond of spiders. In fact, I am absolutely terrified of them. I have advanced arachnophobia. If there is a spider of reasonable size in my house and I am alone I leave. I can't even kill it myself. I start having panic attacks and feel like I am going to die. It is so frightening. So Charlotte and I don't have the greatest relationship. I dread coming and going at night because I just know that one of these days she is going to hop onto my head and stifle my breaths with her web of victory.

One positive thing about Charlotte though, she keeps other bugs away. Maybe some day she will right "The Darrs" over our door for us. If she does that, I will consider letting her stay.

Till then,