By Tim Sanders

This week’s column deals with those creepy creatures with fuzzy heads, plump abdomens and eight hairy legs that spin gossamer webs and lie in wait for unsuspecting victims. You guessed it, I’m talking about all four co-hosts of ABC’s "The View."

Just kidding, actually I’m talking about less fearsome predators–spiders. When I was a kid, I didn’t mind spiders much. They mostly acted the way spiders were supposed to act. They kept to themselves, and built their webs in dark, secluded corners of basements and attics. Of course, I was raised in an area of southwestern Michigan settled by the Dutch, and it has occurred to me that perhaps Dutch spiders are a bit more reclusive. Here in Alabama, the spiders are much more aggressive. They build bigger webs, and build them wherever they by golly want to, which includes, if you stand in one place for more than five minutes, on your head.

Northeastern Alabama spiders also seem to be much more plentiful than their southwestern Michigan counterparts, and I get the feeling they travel in clans. This is probably due to the heavy Scots-Irish population in this portion of Appalachia. I believe my Scots-Irish spider clan theory is valid because there are just dozens of spiders who like to spin their webs in the very same spot, day in and day out, month after month, across the northwest corner of the outside of the glass slider which opens onto our deck. I have been destroying those webs on a regular basis throughout the summer, and whenever I can find the offending spider, I always carefully pick him up, set him ever so gently in a clean napkin, walk slowly to the back fence so as not to frighten him, wish him success in all his future endeavors, assure him that God loves him, and then smush him into several tiny pieces which I am confident could never put themselves back together again. And while this might seem sufficient, often the very next morning there will be another web in that exact same spot, only bigger, thicker, and stickier, with another similar spider nearby, surveying his work, glancing at me with the majority of his eyes as if to say "Nyaah, nyaah, nyaah, whaddya think of that?" You would think that after the same gigantic human had walked through enough spider webs and torn them to bits, these annoying little eight-legged, eight-eyed arachnids would hold some sort of a strategy meeting:
 

"You know, Francine, every morning all of the work I’ve put into constructing a perfectly good silk habitat during the night is almost completely obliterated by that goofball when he takes his dog out for a walk and carries half of our web into the yard on his face. That deck is a regular federal disaster area. Maybe we should think about relocating. There’s a spot over on the grape arbor that offers a fantastic view, and is within crawling distance of a Bug Mart and a day care center for our little egg sac."

But like I said, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill, peaceful, tulip-sniffing Dutch spiders. They’re whiskey-swilling Scots-Irish clan spiders, and they don’t know the meaning of the word "surrender." (My wife is a Scots-Irish lassie, and she doesn't know the meaning of that word, either.) So here’s a more likely scenario:

DUNCAN: "Fergus! Di’ ye nae see what tha’ eejit’s done to MacWhinney’s gran’ web? Waie’s me, ‘tis all gang aglae, whativer tha' means. Shill we stan’ idle by an’ let it pass wi’ nary a fight? Nae, wull be usin’ 20 lb. testa’lain nex’, an’ coat’d wi’ the Ailmur’s glee ... er, glae ... gloo, tha’tis!"

And instead of moving to a safer environment and concentrating on catching the occasional fly and mosquito, the whole Scots-Irish spider clan that occupies the dark regions under our deck will work up a battle plan with me as its target. And I fear that eventually something like this will result:

DUNCAN: "Hoot mon! Hoot, hoot, hoot! Dinnae ye see the gret oaf in his wee baseballit cap? Aye, he’s stragglin’ amang the fankle web nue, an’ flailin’ aboot wi’ his arms. He’s airs fer shore an’ sartain, Fergus. It’ll make tha’ gret nasty June boog baitle MacNutt caught last month look lae a wee froot flee in compar’son, an’ wull ait for a year! Ya can nae ask fer mair, man! Wull ait the haggis, dance the jig, an’ so on an’ so fairth. Hoot, hoot, a’comin’ thru the rye, mae Bonnie lies aever t’ ocean, an’ likewise auld lang syne!"
 

FERGUS: "I have no idea what you just said."

DUNCAN; "O, hoot, mon, pae me nae mind! Wrap ‘im up in yer silk and I’ll be goon ... gang ... gwine ter call i’ the family fair a wee reunion faist, refraishments is ain us."
 

FERGUS: "Whatever."

And shortly thereafter my wife will find what’s left of me dangling on a web, wrapped in a silken, tartan plaid cocoon, with thousands of members of some stupid Scottish spider clan dancing around in their little kilts, playing their wee, squeaky bagpipes, and tossing toothpicks around like so many kabers. Or if some of those spiders are as big as I suspect, tossing full-sized kabers around like so many toothpicks. Either way, it sends shivers down my spine. Or shaivers doon mae speen, as the Highland spiders say.