houseguests

My grandson, the Goonybird, stands 3 ft 4 1/2 inches tall. Average for a three-year-old boy. Normal, healthy kid. Presently running around with his shirt tied around his waist yelling "N-Turtle! Pew! Peww peww peww!" and pretending to pee on the dog.

So far today he's had some bacon, a peanut butter sandwich, some yogurt, some granola...pretty typical breakfast at grandma and grandpas' house.
And eventually, as happens in the natural course of things, he had to hit the Ritz.

While there, he dropped a kid off at the pool.

When I say 'dropped a kid off at the pool' what I mean is, this small adorable child perched his small adorable butt up on the rim and passed a horrific primordial monster object which was literally 1 1/2 feet long and as big around as his forearm.

I was there.

I wiped the bottom which perpetrated this prodigy.

Then I called in his grandfather in to see.

He saw.

I HAVE A WITNESS.
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Up until last week I had a pet garden spider in the bathroom that I used to feed every day. I found her in July, when she wove her first little net up in the corner of the window. From there she moved into the curtains, and did very well while the weather was good and the window was left open. Every morning I saw her in the middle of her egg-sized web munching contentedly on a small fly. Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon she would finish her meal, bundle it up small and neat and cut it loose. I'd pick it off the floor and drop it out into the yard.

I like to have a pet spider every fall, one that I can watch grow and weave. Usually it's a grey garden spider outside my kitchen window, sometimes a black widow (not an aggressive lady in the least, very delicate and very pretty.) Anybody too big, leggedy and hairy gets shown the road because I may be a nut but I'm a nut with limits.

My garden spider moved from the curtain to the corner of the medicine cabinet and threw her web out to connect with the overhead light. By this time she was about the size of a pinky fingernail and the beadwork designs on her back were becoming visible. About the same time the cranefly hatch began. While Chaucers'Bitch was gazing in horror at their glittering multitudes emerging from a cricket pitch across the ocean, I was being annoyed half to death by clouds of these confused things helicoptering around. Many of them blundered into my spiders' net. She nipped them neatly in the shoulder and wrapped a few loops around their wings to keep them from tearing her trap down before they finally went still. Then she'd sink her little teeth into the place where their long, fat abdomens joined their midsection and drain them, making the same motions that a kitten does when all it's whole little being is absorbed in drinking milk.

The spider finally grew to thumbnail size. Big enough for the Biker to notice one morning when hie met it eye to eye hanging in midair in front of the mirror. Because this man knows me, he carefully placed the spider onto the end of the towel rack instead of giving it a burial at sea.

This scared her. She hid in the washcloth and had to be rescued from the sink drain. A day later she turned up in the corner of the ceiling, folded up like praying hands.

The next morning she was once again splayed in the center of a pretty orb web. But the rains had started, so the bathroom window was closed and all the bugs were shut outside. By the end of the day I finally went outside and picked a cranefly off the side of the house and tossed it up to her.

This went on for almost a whole month. Soon she wanted 2 crane flies, and by last week she was big enough to deal with a stunned hornet. Yes, I am a goofturd; yes, I whapped them first and then chucked them into the web. As long as it was still twitching she took it happily.

Last week the first light frost hit and all the bugs went into coming disaster mode. Miss spider was sleeping in the corner when I slipped her into a glass, laid a postcard over the top and put her outside in my rosebush. The rosebush is putting on the last of its' fall trusses, and the small blossoms are full of male spiders of all descriptions, last minute craneflies, confused bluebottles and hornets almost too fat to fly.

I hope she meets someone nice.
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So tell me, Nations; why don't you have any screens in your windows?
Well,

Fine. You see, for some reason-

All right. Back in the late 60's, the homeowners had custom built windows installed, so they're all weird sizes, right? And so we' d have to get custom screens made and that's just not something I think about for some reason.

Besides, it would be expensive.

Yes I know we just bought a new motorcycle. That's different. That-




...Oh, fine. I get a kick out of having birds fly through the house.
Sue me.