Mother Lynx

A few months ago, I was sitting in the living room when I noticed a large green spider on the glass of my front door. This spider was beautifully large and well proportioned. I was raised never to kill a spider if you can avoid it. If you are able, I was taught, the proper thing to do is to capture the spider and release it out of doors.

I was not about to try and capture this spider that was nearly large enough to capture me. I gathered my will found a sturdy piece of cardboard and prodded and scooted the green monster until it was safely out of the house.

 I had never noticed such a spider before so I went to Google to search for a googol of information on my recently evicted tenant. I learned that the spider is commonly called a lynx because it pounces on its prey like a cat. Well, I thought, I do like cats.

A few days later I was sitting in my living room idling a novel away in front of Monday Night Football and lo and behold, the green lynx is back and has defiantly assumed the same space on the door. I thought about my mother’s teachings about the near sanctity of these eight legged poisonous beasts and decided this was one of those moments in which spidercide is an option clearly on the door, I mean table. My concession to my mother’s memory is that I used an environmentally safe bug spray. I should also mention that once I knew the creature was too involved in its own suffering (it writhed in pain), I squashed it.

 I was wracked with guilt. I had to confess that it was all about football. If I hadn’t been impatient, I would not have committed such a cold and brutal murder.

 Not long after, guilt from the dastardly nature of the deed subsided. I began to breathe comfortably again. No bad dreams. No noticeable spider bites. I was returning from work one day when I noticed a green lynx spider nesting on the spiral leaves of the birds of paradise clustered near my patio’s gate. I could see prey snug in a silky wrap. I could see tiny spiders scurrying like playtime at preschool. Whether I was falling in love or crassly seeking a redemptive act, I don’t know.

 I live with my doors open. No screen doors. Just an openness that sometimes lures moths, flies, and bees. I don’t mind them. The moths stupidly bang and bang against a screened window never thinking once of retracing their flight plans back to the openness. Moths seem stupid. Stupid is as stupid does. The flies cling to our rather oversized windows. I think they are hoping that the glass will fade away or something. They fly into the window again and again. My ex-wife has a fly zapper that resembles a tennis racket. The coup de grace is delivered, however, not by a quick backhand or something you might see Venus Williams do; no, rather, it is accomplished by pressing a button that initiates an electric shock to the poor flying dummy.

 You can hear the flies go pop! but they don’t die. They are only stunned. That must be some sensation. Here you are buzzing around a window, waiting for the imaginary toll booth to open so you can get back to the flowers and stuff and suddenly you’re on your back trying to recall where you kept your quarters.

 It was then I realized the ethical dilemma of using this device. I mean, its like receiving capital punishment but only sort of. Before my executees could realize that they had, indeed, survived, I’d seized them with tweezers. Those flies would buzz like mad trying to free themselves. But, like Dracula’s slave, I dropped the squirming bug into the green lynx’s web and presto! The job was done. She was on that squiggly, dazed fly like white on rice or maybe it was like green on lime.

 Anyway she bit her meal behind its head and just waited for him to figure it out. The next day, he was saran wrapped and the kiddies were thrilled at their mother’s prowess.

 I became adept at catching some of the many bees that frequent the birds of paradise. I think green lynx mother prefers the honeybees. I prefer to catch them to shagging flies.

 I’m still feeding her although I don’t want her to become a welfare mom. She could get lazy, you know. She could be thinking right now: where’s that handsome dude that drops plump bees into my nest? He’s cute and all and he never asks me for anything although I do feel a little like a kept widow. What is his deal?