A Death in the Family

A Death in The Family

With apologies to James Agee, whose remarkable opening sentence: "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." is one of the great opening lines in American literature: thanks to Robert Blake, my Director of Advertising at General Mills, who taught me to revere Agee, and so often made me look smarter than I was . . . and am.  

Anyway, we are talking now about the death of the wolf spider who inhabited our laundry room -- or perhaps it is we who inhabited his.  He was a surreptitious member of the family; he and I both knew to keep his presence secret, for Ann does not share my regard for nor tolerance of wolf spiders. 

From time to time, one finds dead wolf spiders -- legs drawn up in stiff angles -- but never before have I found one in the process of dying.  He was sitting on the floor in morning daylight, acting quite dead for they usually hightail for darkness when caught out in light.  But when I probed him with my toe, he stirred, took a few steps and went back into his retracted leg position.  He did not appear to have been attacked, nor eaten by a female after copulation as so often happens to the males.  He was dying, that was clear -- whether from illness or old age or something he ate -- who could tell?

How can you not love that face?

Wolf spiders are prodigious eaters.  They hunt, at night, with astounding night vision -- six eyes, two large for max sensitivity, four smaller for discerning movement and depth perception.  They forage the house for mites, bugs large and small, and other less welcome spiders (if wolf spiders can be considered welcome other than by sorts such as I.)

When I returned from rowing after three hours, he was hunkered down where I had left him.  Ann had not noticed.  I leaned down and gently prodded him.  He took off with a typical burst of speed but lasted only eight inches or so before settling down into his death pose once again.  When I checked back about four hours later, he was still there, but dead.  I felt loss; a remarkable fellow creature gone.

I had known of his presence before this morning.  I know of a couple more in the house, where they hang out, and there are undoubtedly others unknown to me.  He was the first I have ever watched die, however.  A death in the family.

(photos from Wikipedia)