The Spider in the Rearview Mirror

By Evan — — Writing

I have a spider in my rearview mirror.

This not a metaphorical spider in a symbolic mirror; I’m talking about a garden-variety California orb-weaver. I’ve only seen it once, but it lives in the gap between the rearview mirror’s glass and housing. Every night it comes out, spins a little web between the mirror and the window, and retreats back to its lair. Every morning I destroy the web.

Occasionally, I try to root out the spider with a twig, but I can’t seem to get at it. I could probably flush it out with a blast of water from the hose. But I haven’t bothered yet, because what really fascinates me about the spider is its tenacity, its single-mindedness. It doesn’t get discouraged. It doesn’t move its home to a more promising location. It seems to have no ability to process this particular input and react accordingly. The spider and I, we have a failure to communicate.

Fundamentally, I think this is why arachnids and insects are so creepy. Sam raised this idea a while back. If you’re hiking and you step near a snake, it will rear up and hiss at you to warn you off. You scared it, it’s trying to scare you. Message sent, message received. Reptiles, mammals, birds… there’s something comforting about how you can communicate with these creatures, at least at some very basic level. The Brotherhood of the Vertebrates.

But arthropods are alien creatures. Little unfathomable machines. Is it going to bite me? Scuttle away? Ignore me? What is the spider thinking when it fastens those eight beady little eyes on me?

18 thoughts on “The Spider in the Rearview Mirror”

  2. I’ll tell you what they are thinking. “Can I paralyze this thing with my neurotoxins and suck out its still living juices?”, thats what they are thinking. C’mon, eight eyes? Also, spiders are the #1 cause of Necrotic Arachnidism Syndrome.

    It has invaded your domain, your duty seems clear.

  4. Elana and I once had a spider in our car. We would see it scurry and sometimes see a web on our dash- no big deal. Then one day, while making a left turn in a busy intersection, I see a blurry creepy things hanging in midair. It was so close to my face it was out of focus (I was trying to look at the cars whizzing by). This spider was middling size…it’s body was the size of a lego-person’s yellow smiley head.

    It not only startled me, but I was genuinely scared for my life as I was trying to avoid the spider and oncoming traffic.

    As I made my harrowing trek across the lanes and pulled into the nearest parking lot, I ducked my head. Then I rolled down my window and batted the little monster into the street where I rolled over him. Twice.

    Evan, do not let this happen to you. Find a way to excise this demon-bug from your car before it endangers your life.

    Remember, objects seen in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

  5. Sam, no more links! You’re scaring Mur. And me.

    Adiv, you just reminded me of a story from college. One weekend I was hanging out with Eric and Byron, and they got the bright idea of going to Disneyland. So we piled a whole bunch of UCSD people in a van, arrived in Anaheim at the crack of dawn, ran around the park all day without a rest, and left at park closing time (1am? something like that.)

    The point is, we were all zonked, including our driver. So he started swilling Coca-Cola, and he had something like FOUR No-Doz. (He was a big guy.) He’s driving along, and everyone else was asleep or half-asleep. Suddenly our driver lets out a scream, swerves off the highway, and comes to a screeching halt. Everyone jolts awake. “What happened, what’s going on!”

    “There… is… a HUGE spider on the windshield!” he gasps. Well, we all just fell out of our seats laughing, as our driver started crumpling up discarded coke cans and throwing them at the spider. It was pretty funny at the time, although in retrospect we were lucky we weren’t all killed.

    Epilogue: when we arrived safely home and all crashed in the common room, the driver was mumbling to himself, “My heart is racing. My heart is racing. I can’t close my eyes.” No-Doz is dangerous stuff.

  6. Oddly enough, I had a similar experience to Adiv’s — spider dropping down from the roof of the car and ending up right in my face — except I was less lucky. The car went into a tree and got totalled. Happily, I was just fine, and the spider was killed by the airbag.

  8. Found my way to your post via a link from Adiv. Here is a link to another post of a similar nature that seems pertainent. Be careful with whom you pick your battles. Evidence is strong that 100,000 ants are a lot smarter than one homo sapiens.

    http://lagatta.livejournal.com/39564.html

    (Sorry, don’t know how to create a link.)

  9. My Mom had this exact same thing going on when I visited her in Metairie, LA back in late July. I first learned of this when I proposed to borrow the car to go get groceries, and she said, “Don’t kill my spider!” My mom can’t stand creepy crawlies in the house, from the understandably icky roaches to the far-too-cute-to-be-offensive little pink geckos, but she has adopted this spider.

    It came out while I was at Whole Foods. It had already spun a nice-sized web off the driver-side mirror. Boy did it get startled when I took off for home again!

    I tried to get pictures, but it was awkward. What little I managed is up at New Orleans Metblogs. Just another common orb weaver, doing its thing and adapting to human technology.

  10. This is so weird! I googled Spider rear-view mirror because the exact same thing is happening to me – every night! What to I do to get rid of the spider? Raid? Lysol? Blast of water? Does anyone know?

  11. I would go with the blast of water and try to flush it out.

    Also, spiders (and many other insects) really don’t like Windex. You could try spraying Windex all around the crevasses. And hey, if this tactic fails, at least your mirror will be sparkly clean.

  14. Well, in most cases spiegelspinnen dwell in the outside mirror of the car. You’ve got a very special one, if it lives insid your car. 😉

    You’re right: a spiegelspinne ([car] mirror spider] doesn’t talk very much, but it builds nets (? netze).

    Just have a look at:
    http://neusamkeiter.ideesamkeit.de/2008/09/25/die-spiegelspinne/

    You’ll find much information about the little car pet and even a song. (German, ’cause the neologism was coined in this language.)

    Or look at http://www.spiegelspinne.de/ (with dutch quotings).

    Last not least: Go to the blog called above, use email oder comment and post the story of your rearview spiegelspinne to the readers of http://www.blog.ideesamkeit.de

    You’re welcome.

  15. I have a spider in my mirror and It’s bothering me!
    I’m too afraid to flush it out, but every day I have to wipe it’s web off.
    I googled it and found this bulletin, so it’s nice to see other people with the same issue!
    I’m gonna go run outside right now (it’s midnight) and see if he’s out making a new web.

  16. Please tell me how to get rid off it guys, the webs are bothering me soooo much I am scare that it’s gonna lay eggs in there.

  17. This happened to me, it was a fat round spider and would hide behind the mirror. But see I live in Miami and I park outside, so I think it got too hot and it moved out. May be some kind of orb spider. Careful though if you dont know what type it is since some can be dangerous. I wouldnt kill it though, just let it be.

  18. Over in my neck of the woods, we mostly just have ordinary orb weavers — creepy looking but basically harmless. There are some black widows, but they look pretty distinctive. 🙂

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