Odd Encounter with my Headlamp

Last week, I had a close encounter of the weird kind - whilst walking my dog, Tommy, in the dark. Not the first weird encounter we’ve had, but this one is one of those fact-is-stranger-than-fiction things. At least it seemed so, given my advanced state of general ignorance about the world.

A couple of weeks ago I began wearing an LED headlamp whilst walking Tommy in the summer darkness. He likes walking in dark and I’ve lately incorporated a sort of Old Man’s neighborhood watch function in our walks. We’ve had some late-night prowlers in the area and I’ve been on the look-out for them. Actually spotted one with my headlamp a few days ago – but that’s not the story.

The story is about my headlamp. Being on my head with an intense beam, I am used to spotting the reflection in the eyes of various critters one would expect to find, late at night. Rabbits, dogs and cats, mostly. Sometime possums and skunks. Their eyes are perfect retro-reflectors and the returning reflected light pops out of the darkness dramatically. Spooky colors sometimes – especially dogs. There’s one we encounter whose eyes appear bright red – spooky. Tommy’s eyes reflect an amber color.

Well, back to my story. The last few nights, I’ve noticed tiny little scintillating bright green reflections in the grass and at the margins of the pavement. I thought, at first, I was seeing scraps of green tinsel from Christmas tree ornaments. The reflections scintillated and wavered and appeared/disappeared like maybe the breeze was blowing the tinsel around.

It occurred to me, tonight, that my Christmas tree tinsel explanation was probably pretty remote. Why would here be green tinsel all over South Enon Estates – in September?

That night, I spotted a brilliant jewel-like emerald reflection at the side of the road and bent over it with my bright headlamp. There in the middle of my intense light beam was a SPIDER!! About the size of quarter.

I checked a few more of these reflections in the grass on the way home. Sure enough, they were all spiders. The same kind, I think.

When I got home, I checked out “Common Spiders of Ohio,” on the internet and the most common is the Grass Spider. Since I found them in the grass, I concluded this must be it.

Then I looked up stuff about their eye reflections and discovered that EVERYBODY EXCEPT ME ALREADY KNOWS ABOUT THIS!! In fact, there are photographs of veritable seas of glowing spider eyes people have photographed!! Holy Crap!!

Since I could only see the reflection while the spider had its (many) eyes pointed at me – that explains why the lights flicker. He’s looking around. If you see a field of steady bright reflections, a whole shit-load of spiders is STARING AT YOU!!

Step out your back door in the dark with a headlamp on your head, do something to attract the neighborhood spiders’ attention, and you’ll see. This place is crawling with them, literally.

sgb