There's a saying down here about how there's something like 10,000 varieties of spiders in the world and 10,001 of 'em live right here in Texas.  I believe it 'cause I've never lived around so many creepy/crawly critters than we've got around here in the hill country.  I'm getting used to insects, if for no other reason out of self-preservation.  There's no way to keep them out of the house, so you can't afford to panic every time you find ants or wasps or even scorpions in the house.  I get stung several times a year by scorpions, which is about like getting a sting from a wasp, and I get stung by wasps quite a bit.  

I've acquired a healthy respect for some stinging and biting insects, especially the spiders.  We've got 'em all, the black widows, fiddlebacks, recluse, and even tarantulas.  I don't worry about them, but I do keep an eye out.  A sting from a black widow , fiddleback, or recluse can send you to a doctor, and we all like to avoid that whenever we can.  My partner, Bubba Espinoza, doesn't respect spiders at all - he's terrified of them.  Never in my life have I run across anyone with a more unreasonable fear of spiders than him, and sometimes for no reason at all.  The spider that scares him most of all is the big zipper spider, and I've never known of that spider hurting anyone.  They don't sting or bite, to my knowledge, and they're perhaps the most beautiful insect around.

In case you aren't familiar with the zipper spider, it's the long-legged arachnid that weaves ornate webs, and usually in places you can't miss them.  In fact, they'll build a web right in your doorway so fast that you don't know it's there until you've already walked right into it.  They're fast workers, and I've always enjoyed watching them weave their magic.  These spiders are colorful, and not just in how they look.  If it's possible for an insect to have character, they've got it.  We had a spider at the barn one year (I called him Big Zip) that ended up causing a helluva big incident around here.  Bubba wanted to kill the spider, get rid of it, but I wouldn't allow that 'cause I was having too much fun watching him build his elaborate web.  Besides, Big Zip was one of the biggest zipper spiders I'd ever seen before.  

Well, the summer went along fine until we decided to do some painting at the barn.  Bubba went to town and bought eight gallons of barn red paint at the hardware store, then went about painting the front of the barn.  He took the paint inside and placed the buckets on a bench where they'd be out of the way.  Then he opened three cans and poured them into a big five gallon bucket so he'd have to make less trips back and forth getting more paint.  I took care of other chores while he painted the barn, then joined him later.  By then he'd pretty much gone through half the paint because the barn was soaking it up like crazy.  And what the barn wasn't soaking up, Bubba was.

"We're going to need more paint before long.  I'll run to town and get another eight gallons.  Besides, it looks like you're getting as much on yourself as the barn," I said, just looking for an excuse to get out of painting.  Bubba didn't say a word, just looked at me and grinned.  He had paint all over him, partly 'cause he was using the biggest paint brush I'd ever seen.  It must've been a good 6 inches wide, and he already had paint all over his right arm and face.

My trip to town after paint took a good two hours.  I didn't get in a hurry, since the longer I was gone, the more painting he'd get done . . . which meant the less I'd have to do.  At least, that's what I figured.  I expected to find him half done with the front of the barn by the time I got back, but when I pulled up in front of the barn, he wasn't half done by a long shot . . . and he was nowhere in sight.  I figured maybe he'd gone to the house to take a nap, but I decided to check inside the barn first to see if he was getting more paint or something.  That's when I found the mess, the one that started the series of events I was about to unravel.  

I walked over to the bench where he had put the paint and found a bunch of empty buckets.  His big bucket was a few feet away, turned on its side.  On the ground there, I saw where several gallons of paint had spilled out on the barn floor (which was dirt).  The spilled paint was all swirled around, like somebody had rolled around in it.  Then I looked up and saw a big human imprint of the wall . . . a chubby imprint with arms straight out.  There on the ground by the imprint, I found Bubba's big paint brush.  I was starting to get an idea of what had happened, so I went back to the bench and looked around to see where Big Zip was.  His web had been about six feet past the end of the bench, well out of Bubba's way . . . but now it was gone.  And so was Big Zip . . . and Bubba.

I knew then that Bubba had stumbled into the web, went nuts, and then must've kicked over the bucket and slipped and fell in the spilled paint.  Then he ran into the wall.  Like I said, he went nuts when he encountered a spider like that.  I found three more imprints on the barn walls, but I finally followed red footprints out of the barn and found where Bubba had left yet another imprint on the side of the concrete block well house.  There was another imprint on the side of the house (the one we live in), still with arms spread wide but this time a fainter color.  I found another imprint about fifty feet away on the side of a storage shed, then a still fainter one another hundred feet away on the side of an outdoor stable.  And that's where I found Bubba, laying flat of his back and out cold as a cucumber.  He was all covered with red paint, dirt and dust, and there was no way I could tell how bad hurt he was without dragging him to the well house and hosing him down.  I turned on the water and sprayed him off good, and that sort of brought him around.  

I got some old towels and cleaned him up as best I could, then decided he at least had a broken nose.  That's when I took him to the house and stuck him under the shower for a few minutes.  Once I got him dressed (he was still too groggy to do it himself), I hauled him to town to a doctor.  His nose was broken, for sure, and he had a couple of broken fingers to boot.  And he was so sore he could barely move for a week . . . and all over a spider that couldn't hurt him.  I pointed this out to him, of course, but he just called me names that cast reflections on my family background . . . so I let it go and didn't say anymore about it.  Well, not to him, anyway.  I told everybody else, though, just so he'd have to explain it to everybody he met for the next month.  I did that mean little thing 'cause I had to finish painting the barn.

I never saw Big Zip again, of course.  For all I know, Bubba smashed him against a wall somewhere.  And I've never seen another zipper spider that big, or that beautiful, or that could cause as much of a ruckus as he did.

C. Duhon, 10/30/07