charlotte

She's back. That mysterious elusive web-making spider named Charlotte is back and making herself quite at home on my driver side mirror. I noticed her web this morning while stopped at a light. It reached from the top of my door down to the door handle and back up to the side mirror filling the triangular gaps with zig-zag entanglements. She's been missing ever since I last wrote about her existence, and I wonder every time she reemerges where has been and who else she's influenced. Once I parked at work I knocked her web down with piece of discarded paper from my car. I didn't want her web extending any further into my own personal space.

Hours later after the sun vanished for its nightly slumber I stop at a gas station to fill up my tank. I'm sitting in my car feet dangling down outside the open door, elbow resting on my knee, and my head resting on my hand. A glimmer appears on my side mirror with quick jerky movement and I intently focus on the speck. It's Charlotte salvaging her web yet again. Only this time she's been wary to extend too far from the borders of the industrial side mirror. Her web is contained circular dewy and dense. Without thinking I grab another piece of scrap paper to begin my vengeful attack on the web again, but as I crouch down to eye the web pre-destruction I freeze. Charlotte has also stopped moving. We both engage in the typical childish thought that no one can see us if we're not moving. Analyzing her web and witnessing Charlotte in a more dignified light, I retreat from my attack stance and fall back to sitting inside my car. Charlotte starts jittering again with the comfort of a glass window separating us from each other. I point my finger at her and say, "You can stay there for now, but don't you dare come inside my car. If you do, I'm telling you now I will hurt you. But if you do your thing out there, we'll be good." With a giggle to myself realizing I just verbally spoke to a spider, I hear the click of the gas tank telling me it is finished.