BOB KORNEGAY: Spiders, spiders everywhere around these parts

I’m wondering if any of my fellow woods ramblers have been paying attention to what looks like an over-supply of spiders along the trails these days. The eight-legged critters are everywhere, like maybe there’s a national arachnid convention in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama.

I’m sure there’s some traditional regional folklore covering this phenomenon. Just what does this bumper crop of spiders mean? Long winter? Short winter? Bad luck? Good luck? Halloween?

Whatever the significance of this spidery influx, the critters themselves don’t seem overly concerned with it. They’re just there, along every conceivable pathway, going about their business and doing what spiders do best, catching bugs and Bob in the sticky strands of their ever-present webs. Some days I swear there’s a spider web suspended between every pair of trees south of Atlanta.

Most of these silken orbs (many of them quite pretty) hang roughly 5 to 7 feet above the ground, just the right height to catch me or some other hapless wanderer full in the face as we stroll along, unaware and unsuspecting, during our outdoor sojourns.

Tell me, why are they all hanging at just that elevation? Don’t the industrious weavers know by now that I stand six feet, two inches tall and am thus bound by physics to accidentally rip asunder their hard-earned feats of instinctive engineering every time I walk by? Don’t they realize that a web can easily snare just as many flying insects at a height of, say, 8 feet or maybe 2 feet off the forest floor?

If it is, as it sometimes seems, a practical joke on the spider’s part, I certainly hope it’s worth it. I’ve studied spider webs very closely and have reached the conclusion that there’s a lot of work involved in web construction. I mean, this big old mama spider toils her butt off for hours only to have some big, clumsy two-legged klutz blunder into her handiwork and tear the whole thing apart in a fraction of a second. Yep, spiders are either very dedicated smart alecks or else quite stupid.

I once read that spider’s silk is perhaps the strongest of all natural organic fibers. A half-inch diameter rope made from the stuff is supposed to be capable of lifting and suspending the entire population of Two Egg, Florida, or some such thing. How that was arrived at or proven, I can’t say, but who am I to argue?

Granted, the tensile strength of a spider web is indeed amazing. I’ve learned from experience that it generally takes at least six hours and a toilet brush to remove spider silk once it becomes adhered to my person.

Fortunately, in the process of my becoming “web-wrapped,” the spiders themselves seldom get on me and, thankfully, seldom sink their spidery little fangs into me when they do. This is much to their credit. If the roles were reversed, I’m not sure I would be so magnanimous. If it was my web, and I had spider teeth, I’d bite me. Hard.

Occasionally, however, an errant arachnid does hop on for a ride. And what a ride the little bugger gets. You see, I’m not at all afraid of spiders when I can see them, but when they get on me they always wind up someplace on my body that defies visual detection. Anatomical locations that immediately come to mind are my hair, the portion of me directly beneath the front of my shirt, and bodily bits and pieces concealed by loose-fitting underwear.

Given that, particularly the latter, I am apt to transport myself, rapidly, far away from the spider’s natural range, not to mention my own.

Thus far, I’ve managed to refrain from declaring all-out war on the eight-legged horde I daily encounter. Spiders, after all, are interesting, innocuous creatures and I don’t begrudge their “hanging” around, as it were. I do wish, however, that lady hiker I met the other day hadn’t laughed so loudly after she caught a glimpse of me exiting my Fruit of the Looms and dashing headlong through the woods like some crazed satyr or forest fairy.

Not that I’m opposed to amusement at my expense, or course. I’m sure I would have found it funny as well.

Thing is, though, I wish she’d pointed her finger elsewhere while in the throes of unabashed hysteria. Naked 66-year-olds have feelings, too.

Email outdoors columnist Bob Kornegay at [email protected].