Then there was the time I found one lurking behind the toilet. I jumped back in horror. Luckily the broom was nearby, because it buzzed the room like a jet. I ended up flailing the broom haphazardly at the walls and floor, hoping to stun it. The spectre of it excaping into the living room was so threatening that I would have done anything to corner and kill it in the bathroom. Anything. Which I did, though I have no memory of how.

Local politics are on the spider’s side. The landlord has lately installed stunningly low cost windows in this old house. They are wondrously airy. However, the window screen sits on bumper clips which raise the screen 1/4 inch and more above the sill. That open window is an invitation to mosquitos and flies and black widows, as well as itinerant new mice and cockroaches. But let us be realistic. Officials are not inspired to enforce City Health Codes after a well-heeled citizen landlord has put out money for spanking new cheap and airy windows, even if the screens rather obviously let in things that fly and crawl instead of keeping them out. I have been hometowned. With manufacturers like that, no wonder malaria is still not stamped out in the tropics.

Two years ago I retrieved a tarp, and the 30 black widows it contained, from the small garage (ancient and sievelike and therefore cannot be insect bombed) which comes with this house. Yes, they do leap. I have never entered the garage again, because I wish to live. I am optimistic, however, because the owner says he plans to tear it down.

I have stopped trying to grow a lawn. In the summer here it’s sizzling and parched, and water only encourages black widows and other insects. During one of my orgies of watering to keep a newly seeded lawn alive, earwigs came up in the night and covered the entire house like a plague of locusts. My next stab at watering my way to a lovely turf resulted in hordes of striped male black widows storming the front door as I came home late at night. Many large mature female black widows, with their nasty fire-engine red hourglasses exposed, were also hanging nightly from webs outside the house. Seems I water here at my peril. I thought of lizards, but realized outside cats would only eat them.

No denying that steel-toed workboots clobber black widows, if you have trained your spiders to sit and wait while you take aim, that is. I have fond memories of the coastal city where I was born. There a stink bug and a few red ants in a vacant lot were a big deal.