Spider Migration

Disturbingly, not a big one.

It's spring again, and that means that the spiders are moving. My theory is that they're on some sort of massive migration and they're simply moving through the house rather than living in it. Whatever it is, we see a LOT more spiders this time of year. For a very long time, as the man of the house, I was the sole spider catcher. Yes, that's spider catcher, not spider killer. My migration theory makes is seem kind of mean to kill them, as they're just passing through. I catch them under a cup or a jar and slide a magazine under the whole contraption and move them out. After years of doing this alone, I have finally convinced the kids that it's ok to give it a try. They've gotten quite good at it and I'm usually only called out for the big ones. I'm a proud daddy.
The other day they captured one that was carrying around her egg sack. Somehow my son got it in his head that the right thing to do with it was to keep it and build it a habitat in a jar and take it to school for a class pet. I convinced him that punching air holes in the lid was a bad idea with how tiny baby spiders are. Oddly, his teacher thinks that stuff like this is great, and the spider is living somewhat happily in class now. I can't tell if she's a brilliant educator or just slightly confused about what the word 'spider' actually means. I am interested to hear if the babies hatch though.
Even though it's pet Wednesday on the blog, I certainly don't consider the spiders in our house pets. They're more along the lines of the resident fauna. We coexist with them as peacefully as we can and we've made a slightly uneasy peace with them. In another month or so the spider traffic will calm down considerably as their theorized migration comes to an end, and we'll see very little of them until next spring. That's a really good thing.