Daddy Longlegs

Daddy Longlegs Daddy Longlegs
Crawling on my shin
Your legs are long
They creep me out
although they're very thin.

Daddy Longlegs Daddy Longlegs
Walking up my wall
I do not care for your long legs,
Don't care for them at all.

Daddy Longlegs Daddy Longlegs
Walking on my head
You make me screech,
I grab a book
WHACK.
Oh dear, you're dead.

We have had an incursion of Daddy Longlegs. I don't know how they are getting in, or why, though likely the recent rain has something to do with it. But lately they are turning up all over the entry hall, and randomly in the living room. They seem to like to hang out on the curtains that hang over the pier windows on either side of the front door. Yesterday I was eating dinner on the sofa and one came clambering up my arm. This caused me to shriek and nearly spill my plate all over myself. I saved my roast beef by only the merest margin.

I do not like them. I know they won't hurt me. I know that old myth that the Daddy Longlegs is the most venomous spider, etc. But it's a myth. Daddy Longlegs are arachnids, but they are not spiders, and they are not venomous at all. Nevertheless. I do not like them. I do not like their creepy long legs. I do not like that creepy little bouncing thing they do, and I really do not like the way they can clamber up and over you before you even know they are there!

This summer, when Gray was duck-proofing (though not, unfortunately, raccoon-proofing) the garden, he moved some old fence panels, and on the backs of them were big balls of Daddy Longlegs, all bunched together. Hundreds of them. And as soon as he picked up the panels and started moving them, the creepies started scurrying off, with their creepy, bouncy gait, in every direction. Gave me the hopping heebie-jeebies, I can tell you.

Apparently we have some sort of great environment for the things, cause they are everywhere. When I clean, I find their sucked-dry carcasses folded up like tiny broken umbrellas in cob spider webs all over the house. One more reason to let those little house spiders do their work.