More on dock spiders
A couple of years ago, I needed to replace a power line that runs out to an outlet box on my dock. It was early summer and the water was still reasonably high such that there was a few inch gap between the top of the water and the edge of the dock, giving me about a foot of clearance between the water and the top of the dock. I needed to staple the wire to the underside of the dock so I donned my mask and snorkel, plus dive light and hammer and swam up under the dock. To my surprise, when I surfaced under the dock and turned on the light, the "ceiling" above me was covered every few feet with dock spiders of all sizes - we're talking about more than a couple dozen in a 6 X 10 space. A pretty disconcerting discovery. I had this image that as soon as I started hammering there would be a "rain of spiders" with legions of dock spiders dropping into the water and then trying to decide whether the crib on either side was closer than the balding head sticking out of the water as they raced for dry land. Consequently, I came out from under the dock and began banging on the side board with the hammer, hoping to disperse them. When I went back under, they had all scurried off to places unknown. Needless to say, I completed my work as rapidly as possible with a cautious eye to the ceiling above me.
Now my wife is mortified by spiders (and bees -- she's quite allergic to the latter) so the running prank in our house is to play "hide the plastic spider" -- it's only about 1-1/2" in diameter. It ends up in kitchen drawers, under pillows, in chairs, in dressers, in the laundry etc. The object is to see how big a shriek/jump you can get out of poor old mom when she unexpectedly comes across this ersatz arachnid. Maybe I should have put this idea with the thread about things to do to keep from getting bored in the summer?
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