This is spider season, that period when I start to notice the cobwebs tucked into every corner of our house. I’m not sure whether the advent of this season is connected to the elements (the spiders deciding — sensibly — to move indoors with the onset of the cold and rain) or whether it might simply be a change in lighting — the afternoon sun lower on the horizon — that better highlights their webs. Whatever the reason, the spiders are here again in force.

For some reason which I’ve never understood, spiders seem to have a fondness for bathtubs. I’ll modify that last observation: spiders which are monstrously outsized, heart-stoppingly hairy, and probably carnivorous, seem to have a fondness for bathtubs; the timid, miniaturized cousins of the spider family appear to have more sense, and keep a lower profile.

And why is it that tubbed spiders are invariably found in the early hours of the mornings, never at any other time of day? What prompts their nocturnal excursions? Could our bathtub be the end result of a night of serious arachnid bar-hopping, the largest, most hirsute of the spider clan getting together with his eight-legged drinking buddies to knock back a glass or two of housefly blood? (a libation which, no doubt, has many intoxicating properties that we humans have yet to discover)

I picture them weaving their unsteady way back to their respective webs, arm interlinked with arm interlinked with arm interlinked — well, you get the picture — incontinently dribbling a bit of silk from time to time, slurring their wispy voices as they take turns singing sad, Irish ballads to each other (I imagine the largest one having a particular fondness for “Carrickfergus”; invariably near tears, his thin voice cracking when he reaches the words “But the sea is wide and I can’t swim over”…)

There it will suddenly be, spread out voluptuously before them: an enormous field of white porcelain glowing in the moonlight, all that separates them from their longed for night of rest. Intimates of shadowy, dust-encrusted corners, they will be hypnotized by the sleek expanse of cool enamel, silenced by the sheer magnificence of the sight. And they will perch, mesmerized, on the tub rim, each of them considering the implications of the discovery, attempting to adjust their world view to account for this unexpected proof of paradise.

Their tiny spider brains will whirl as they consider the possibilities: the gargantuan web they might spin, collectively, from edge to edge. One of their number will fuzzily recall the lion-ant’s technique, imagining himself plump and patient down there near the drain, waiting for his meals to arrive like manna from above.

Eventually the spider fellowship cracks as the most susceptible of their number is overcome with emotion. Delicately placing one hairy leg before the other he will make his halting way towards the precipice, ignoring the cautions of his (slightly) more sober companions. “Ralph, don’t do it!” they’ll cry out in unison.

“The beauty; the beauty…” Ralph will whisper, enraptured and oblivious, inching towards the blinding light.

And then the swift, vertiginous glissade as Ralph’s world tumbles end on end, his companions vanishing forever from his sight above. It will be a harsh awakening, and there Ralph will wait for you come morning: trapped, hung-over, and surly, spoiling for a fight.

When J’s sister lived with us years ago, it was she who became the official House Spider Catcher, an unsalaried position accompanied by no special status in the wider world. I think the responsibility fell to her because she was the first one up each morning, the first to run a bath. We’d hear Jo give a muffled exclamation, and then determined footsteps marching to the kitchen as Jo retrieved her patented Spider Eviction Kit™.

The Kit consisted of: an empty 1L plastic yoghurt container, and a piece of thin, stiff cardboard. Cleanly, neatly, Jo would lean over the bathtub and whip the yoghurt container down — snap! — upon the lurking spider. Zip! — she’d slip the cardboard underneath, and before that spider knew what the hell was going on he’d been detected, selected, collected, and ejected, into the great outdoors.

Since Jo’s departure, J and I share spider eviction duties. I tend to be silent and methodical, while J speaks gently to the spiders as she escorts them outside: “There you go. Off into the rain with you”, the door closing with a click, the tub now free from threat.

Citing Mendel I tell myself that, by casting our spiders out of their indoor Eden, we’re accelerating the evolution of the species; their cold-and-damp-adapted descendants will be that much more capable of surviving apocalyptic environmental change.

And if, in my less Buddhist moments, I wade into our cobwebs wielding a vacuum cleaner like some vengeful Indiana Jones, I tell myself that the spiders which I’ve just sucked into oblivion are simply starting down a brave, new evolutionary path. Those few who struggle free of the compacted dust bunnies, those that claw their weary way up the long, ribbed hose to emerge and colonize the clutter of our closet: they will be the first of a vacuum-resistant, Superspider line.