Initial observations of wild life... or SPIDERS!!!

Spiiiiiiiiiiiiders!!! Buweahhahahaha! Scared? oh? WELL BEEE AFRAAIIIIDDDDDDDD (wow that word looks weird in all caps and elongated... anyway, on to the post!)

Ok, see, I’ve liked spiders most of my life. I have fond childhood memories of throwing carpenter ants into funnel spider webs and watching the spider scurry out and quickly start to suck the juices from the poor ant’s now paralyzed body. But apparently not everyone in this world has such nice memories of spiders. Now, don’t get me wrong… I hate walking through a spider web just as much as anyone else I know (the creepy crawly “OH ME GOODNESSSSSSS IS DE SPIDER OFF ME!?!? IS IT CRAWLING ON MY BACK!??!!? IS IT GOING INTO MY EAR TO LAY ITS EGGS AND EAT MY BRAINS OUT WITH ITS CHILDREN FOR RUNNING INTO ITS WEB AND RUINING ITS WHOLE NIGHT OF WORK!!!?!?!?!" feeling that you get when running into a web…)

Don’t give me those looks, you know you have the exact same thoughts after running into a web.

Only, now, imagine the spiders ten times bigger *and* ten times more plentiful than in America. Before I came to Japan when I thought ‘spider’ I thought of a small, maybe half-dime sized spider that you sometimes catch sneaking out from under the refrigerator. Not so In Japan. Well, I take that back. Japan has those small kinds too, but they are the ridiculously scary-fast jumping spiders that hunt... oh I don’t know… birds or something. These jumping types I kinda like now, actually. You scare them and they bounce away like a toad. But anyway, back to the huge ones! These suckers span at least 4 football fields with their legs, and their webs are.. umm.. I dunno actual measurements, but probably as big as the Milky Way? Yeah that’s about right if I had to guess.

Ok, so, I exaggerated… maybe… a TEEENY bit. But, seriously, only a little. Anywhoo, after watching these giants grow, they intrigue me now. When I arrived in Japan it was already peek “OH… MY… WHAT THE HECK IS … THAT!!!!” (said while pointing at one of the huge spiders) season. The best way for me to describe these spiders verbally (although I am going to have pictures… if I can find them) are, well, WITH their legs they are the size of my palm, without legs, the size of my ring finger, aaaand they are basically everywhere you look. However, they aren’t always this big. It’s only in late august that they put forth their true colours (bright yellow and red. Nature’s way of saying “I r going to be killz0ring you” (translation into normal English, “I’m poisonous.”)

It’s this growth process that interests me and I was sad when it ended and all the monst... err spiders suddenly disappeared when winter fell. But before we get to the superly amazingly and interesting growth process, one of the other interesting aspects of these spiders is the fact that they hardly ever move. Negating a visit by the typhoon monster (sometimes even normal rain didn’t dislodge them) I would place money on their being in the exact same place and web that I first spied them. When I first arrived, the spiders were toward the end of their life cycle and had already staked claims to what tree, post, fence or whatever they wanted. Because of this it only took roughly three days to know which areas to avoid, when to duck, (and funny as it is) when to jump. (lets just say I sometimes took the path less traveled.) but from the time I arrived till spider death, they stayed in exactly the same places and, apparently rebuilt identical webs when needed. But I dunno, I'm not sure they'd ever needed to rebuild... I can only see the webs of these spiders being damaged as a result of catching a bird… or two......(or three). I can say this because I accidentally played the part of a bird on two or three occasions, running into webs of finely woven steel and subsequently doing the freak out dance of spiderweb-on-ya. I remember it so well... one time, when I unknowingly attempted to walk through one of these webs, it felt like my face was trying to force its way through a wall the density of something between Styrofoam and cement. I know for an absolute fact that if I was spider prey, these webs are definitely strong enough to catch a good three or four of me before needing replacement.

Like I said earlier, I hardly ever saw these spiders in motion, however, there were a few times that I did. There was this one time that I was walking home late at night and I briefly glanced up from my txting and, to my surprise, saw one of these palm-sized spiders dangling from a single cord, evily clawing the air with all eight legs literally inches from my face. I also could have sworn I heard whispers of spidertalk saying, “Peekaboo! Walk one more step…please…I want… I.. want… to… to… eeeeeeeeeeeeeat…. your… your…your braaaaainseses…….Bwauehaehahahahaahahahahahhahahhahahhahahahahaha!!!!!!!... mew.” (spiders can want to be cats too, you know!)

The only other time I ever saw one of these spiders move was when I was forced by the dormitory's authorities to clean my balcony before moving out (one of the standard requirements. Bah. leaving a country is almost as hard-stupid as moving in!) Seeing as I hadn’t cleaned or been on this shabby thing called a balcony all year, when I opened my window to see the state that it currently was in, I was expecting to see a few spiders living there. In retrospect, taking into account the proportion of spiders living in japan, there were only a couple living on my porch. There just happened to be twelve palm sized spiders, which to american me, doesn't really feel like just a couple though. Oddly enough though, these twelve spiders were hanging in what appeared to be sixteen different webs. I am not sure what the extra 4 webs were for, perhaps catching birds, or human babies, but evil human me knocked them all down with two pieces of wood I had hiding behind my bed. Yep, the remnants of the 2x4 I had smashed up earlier in the semester. This whole situation was fun, but creepy at the same time. With twelve spiders around, and me having to actually set foot outside on the balcony, I was always wondering if/where one was sneaking up from to extract its revenge for knocking down its web. I was guessing if one attacked, it'd just kill me, but who knows what kind of spider derived torturing methods they have! so, I knew I had to be extra careful since spiders can be coming from below… or from the side… or from above… or from a second spider-demention... or anywhere! I have often wondered who is more sneaky, a spider bent on killin’ a person who just knocked down its web or a ninja who just… well I dunno... wants to kill someone? Is that what ninjas do? I think so. Anywho.. yeah.. So in one year, those were the only times I’ve ever seen these spiders move.

Now, I guess I should get to the growth process, since I DID say it was the most interesting part. Well, it is, but it’s kind of hard to explain. Basically it is interesting to me because when the giant yellow/red spiders disappeared I became extremely sad. But when spring…hehe…hehe…sprang (sorry I just HAD to use those words together :D) I replaced the sadness in my heart with an interest in these little green spiders I started to notice. These spiders were probably the size of a grain of rice, that’s how little they were. But anyway, I saw them all over the place, and had never noticed them before. I thought it was because I was too busy noticing the giant yellow and red spiders so I felt an odd feeling of regret for overlooking them, but little did I know, these tiny green spiders turned out to BE the giant yellow and red spiders! That’s right, apparently when they are little, and haven’t the power to make the bird-catchingly strong webs as a defense against… well… birds, so they stay a greenish colour and spin webs strong enough to catch a few of these. Once they eat a few of those, and start to get bigger and bigger and then MASSIVELY HUGE, they start to get a little yellow, and then when they reach about palm size they add a giant dot of red to their stomachs as if to say, “RAWR! I R SPIDER! I HAVE RETURNED TO EAT FRED’S BRAAAAAINS ONCE AGAIN!!! MUEWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!... mew” (yet again, seriously! spiders can want to be cats too!)

Anyways, so… yeah.

I like spiders.

[Ken Hase-G] That’s good.

-Fred