2005-03-25 || 6:40 p.m.

|| note to spiders: don't read this. ||

one of the biggest gross-out feelings i have encountered, oddly enough for i am not usually afraid of spiders, was when i was living in the rickety attic room in oakland and watering my miniature roses in the window (i wish wish wish you could see the attic room back then. it was perfect. long enough to do five cartwheels back-to-back ((although difficult because of the slanty ceilings)) with three compartments: slanty ceiling area one with victorian couch and wee desk: the work/languish area, middle compartment with coat rack and record player and tall window and four tiny haunted closets whose doors opened and shut on their own: the reception area, and slanty ceiling area number two featuring bed and a collection of polaroids and postcards: the sleep. it got very hot in the summers so i would open the window in s.c.a. #2 so that my feet got to hang outside. it was like a giant tree house.). yes. i was watering flowers and looked up to see in the corner of the window sill was a large insecty nest/sack (will not write "sac" here because it reminds me too much of bawls, and spider + testicle imagery is more than i can bear at the moment, although i don't mind either when handled separately. omg! handled! balls! also? sorry this is such a dumb entry.) i am not certain, but it could have been pulsating. in any case it was so scary in that alien pupating way, with stingers and mandibles and needleclaws surely growing inside, that i flipped. i remember holding a broom handle to it and ringing up my scientist dad for advice. we thought it was a wasp nest, as it had been a problem in the past with brook's identical attic room across the hall, and i knew what i had to do. i had to get rid of the alien incubator before they could chew their way out and attack me in my sleep. so i stood there crying holding the broom and knocked the nest down with my eyes closed. because i didn't want to witness the harm of my insect friends. and sadly, it is important to open your eyes and pay attention when taking care of this sort of thing, because i inadvertently knocked it into my room. it touched me. on my foot. so i squished it.
i am not in the habit of squishing things. at work i am known throughout the entire office building as the savior of arthropods, dutifully carrying out spiders and caterpillars to the half-dead bushes outside. i don't mind sharing my bedroom with spiders and daddy long legs as long as they know my pillow is off limits.
so i felt really. really. bad. and being the daughter of a scientist i couldn't simply sweep it up and throw it out the window. i had to get down on the floor and examine it.
it wasn't a wasp nest.
it was billions. and billions. of tiny not-quite-ready baby spiders.
so many spiders.
and again, i don't mind spiders, and you could think of the nest in a benevolent soft-rock ballad charlotte's web way, where they get old enough to climb out of the sack and weave tiny spider parachutes to fly away on the wind, but the volume of spider parts and the ooziness and the way most of them were frozen in the alien incubation position was just so gross and scary.
i called my dad back. he asked me to take pictures.
i swept the hell out of my attic room.

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