Encounter In The Bathroom

Spiders can hear. At least I thought so when that white spider crawling down my bathroom mirror answered my quiet "Well, hello" by ducking behind the mirror. I wasn't close or loud, and, by the way, I wasn't speaking to make friends. I had murder on my mind. I pounded on the mirror, shoved a narrow comb behind, trying to scare him out. No luck. I came away from this morning encounter convinced that spiders can hear and their hearing is good.

I came away a bit worried, too. Was home for that spider behind my mirror? This is a big mirror. No lifting it from the wall.  Would the spider sneak out at night and do something nasty? Would I wake up with it spinning a web around my face? Given its size, I felt sure it could bite. Would I never find it? Would I one day discover a whole line of baby white spiders traipsing across my bathroom ceiling?

Well, the day was upon me. I could not hang out in my bathroom, stalking a spider who might be smarter than me.

That was Thursday morning. Saturday came, and I was changing the bedding on my bed. I pulled down a quilt from the top shelf of my little bathroom closet and there was the white spider, hanging on a string of web attached to the top of the door. It scurried upward and disappeared. I tried to reach up there with the toilet wand, make him come down again. No luck.

Now I was really worried. This guy (don't know the gender, of course) gets around, probably knows my bathroom better than I do. And he likes it here. Or she. I spoke to him again, louder this time and let him know he was not welcome in my bathroom. Or in my house, for that matter. What do I pay those Orkin people for, anyway?  I think he heard me, or I thought he did. But he made no reply and didn't show himself again for about a half hour. 

At that time he made a fatal mistake. Yippee!

He was sitting on the wall above my hamper. This time I said, "Oh, there you are," but not out loud. I didn't want him to hear me and run away. I quietly grabbed some toilet paper, moved close, and got him. The toilet received him, and he was gone.

So I am relieved. But because I knew I wanted to write some kind of report on this personal triumph, I did some research on spiders and their hearing capabilities.

There are no such capabilities. Spiders cannot hear. They don't have ears. They feel vibrations. So say the people who know these things. I suppose they have dissected spider after spider to discover that they have no ears, but how do they know spiders feel vibrations? Have the spiders said something about that? Not to me they haven't.