I happen to like spiders. 

I have been a fan of spiders ever since the flight of NASA's Skylab 3 in 1973. The coolest experiment on that mission was thought up by Judith Miles, a high school student from Lexington, Massachusetts. Young Ms. Miles (now Dr. Miles) had the brilliant idea to send spiders into space to see if they could construct their webs without their accustomed-to gravity and wind. After an open call for auditions, two European garden spiders were hired, Arabella and Anita.  After a few failed attempts – behold! – Arabella completed an orbed web. She was praised, gently patted on the head, and awarded a housefly.

If you live where I live – Covington, Georgia – and you had walked outside during the autumn at a distance of more than twenty feet, you spent a good part of your day picking out of your hair and off of your clothes the strong sticky filaments of the twelve-foot-wide three-layered webs of our latest exotic species, the Joro spider. Those tennis-ball-yellow and blue-black creatures are orb weavers, but just to be multi-dimensional, they make masses of tangled-up messes on either side of the orbs. 

Joro spiders are native to Asia. Then, in 2011ish or 2012ish, they latched onto some plants and hid away in shipping containers to make their way to the United States. They were first spotted in Hoschton, Georgia.

Seeing as how they are native to Japan and have been proliferating in the Southeast, these spiders have been proclaimed “The Kudzu of Arachnia.” (That proclaiming was done by me, so don’t look it up.) 

In August, a Joro spider built her web right in the main entryway of my house. I let her be and began to stop and watch her every time I passed. A remarkable truth: my comings and goings were frequent enough for her to give me ingress and egress to my home; she created for me a yellow gossamer archway.

One morning in early September, after I had done a great deal of Joro rabbit-hole research, I was having breakfast with my Aunt Marguerite at the home of her best friend, Mary Frances. I started telling the ladies all about the spiders and that Joro is short for Jorōgumo (郎蜘蛛) – literally "entangling bride," an alluring shape-shifting woman in Japanese folklore. She entices men only to intwine and devour them slowly over time.

Now...

My eighty-five-year-old Aunt Marguerite loves Halloween, and she is fond of saying, “It’s called TRICK or treat. I believe, occasionally, it should be a trick."

My aunt practices that which she preaches, and every few years, she opts to be in trick mode.  For example, in 2019, she illuminated her porch with an orange light, put a smiling Jack-o-Lantern out on the step, and placed a steel bowl on top of a high plant stand with a sign above it that read, “Please take one and leave the rest for others.” She had fun sitting in the dark behind a sheer-curtained window, as greedy kids eagerly plunged their hands into five pounds of cold fettuccini. 

On the morning of my visit, after I told Marguerite and Mary Frances about Jorōgumo, Mary Frances snapped her fingers and said, "Marguerite, I know a trick for you this Halloween! You should be Jorōgumo!"

Marguerite had begun to say, "Wait..." when Mary Frances jumped up, hurried to the back of the kitchen, and hollered through the screen door, "Kids, get in here!”

The kids were Marguerite's 9-year-old great-grandson, Chaz, and Mary Frances's 7-year-old great-niece, Purelle. 

Purelle and her parents live with Mary Frances in her otherwise rambling house. At Purelle's birth, her Mama had named her Pearl because she thought it sounded precious. But Mary Frances dubbed the child Purelle because she was born in 2020, and in that year of the pandemic, what could be more precious than Purelle?  Mary Frances is fond of saying, "That name is old-fashioned, but it's clean."

The kids were playing badminton in the backyard, and after they agreed on the score and who would serve next, they obediently came into the house with their racquets in hand.

Mary Frances said, "Ooo, badminton racquets. Perfect!" She reached up in her cupboard and brought down a large pickle jar. She took off the lid, opened a drawer, and pulled out an ice pick. "Follow me, kids.

After poking holes in the lid with the ice pick, Mary Frances instructed the kids to take the jar, go through the neighboring woods, use the racquets to collect as many Joro spiders as they could, and return when the jar was full.

After the kids left to begin their quest, Mary Frances looked at Marguerite and me and said, "Come on." We followed her into the hallway, where I was instructed to wrestle open one of the ancient pocket doors of the East parlor. Mary Frances had closed that room off years ago to save on heat. Inside was a collection of furniture and junk that was destined for disposal or donation to Repairers of the Breach (the poor man's Goodwill). In the middle of the room stood an old armoire with one door disengaged and propped on the side. "Ah, yes, Hazel Motes chifferobe!"

Again, Mary Frances said, "Come on." Marguerite and I followed her to the bedroom where there stood the Chifferobe Worthy of Heirlooming. Inside was her deceased husband's woolen policeman's dress uniform. She pulled it out, paused, kissed it, and lovingly said, "Wiley, I know you will be proud." She turned to Marguerite. "Here." Mary Frances gently draped the uniform on the forearms of her dearest friend. Then, she opened the cedar-lined drawers and pulled out several woolen sweaters. As she piled them in my arms, Mary Frances was quietly muttering, "Don't need it. Nope, never again...This one has sparked all the joy it's gonna spark..."

Marguerite and I followed Mary Frances back to the parlor, where we were instructed to loosely place a couple of sweaters on top of the old armoire and lay the rest about the room. Mary Frances took the uniform and hung it up inside. She walked to the window, cracked it open, and said, "Andy, go get the ladder out of the garage and take the screen out of this window, please."

When the kids returned, Mary Frances told them to take the jar into the parlor, open it, and put it on the floor on its on its side. The kids did so.

Then, every day until October 27th, the kids caught more Joro spiders and brought them to the parlor, where the spiders feasted on the wool-feasting moths that had come in through the window. The pampered Joros grew to be as big as Chaz's hands.

Mary Frances's old board-and-batten one-car detached garage was transformed into The Halloween Spider House. The kids and I painted the inside of it flat black. After we installed our theatrical lighting, we re-collected the spiders from the parlor and released them into the garage.

On October 30th, the grocery store was decorated for Christmas, so we bought full-sized Halloween candy at half price.

Marguerite's Jorōgumo costume was her widow's funeral dress with sheer sleeves. As with Mary Frances and Wiley, Maugerite knew her deceased husband, Charles, would be proud. Her costume was completed with eight legs fashioned from pool noodles striped with black electrical tape, all procured from the Dollar Tree.

On Halloween night, Chaz was the Spider House’s host, dressed in a small "retired" rental wedding tux we found at Repairers of the Breach. Purelle was costumed as "Little Joro" in a black leotard with a green tutu and eight of the same green swimming noodles.

We allowed six trick-or-treaters at a time into the garage. The only light was a yellow mini-LED, tightly focused on Marguerite's face from below. She slowly mumbled to the children, "What do you desire from Jorōgumo?"

With each group of six children, she waited patiently, gazing upon each child until one broke the silence with, "Candy."

"Ah, yes. I have full-sized chock-o-lates. Reese’s with three peanut butter cups per pack. All Three Musketeers! Who among you possesses the courage to take from the Bowl of Jorōgumo?"

Holding out the steel bowl, Marguerite waited until one kid came forward.  As soon as that kid touched what was in the bowl, *CLICK* – the lightning changed. The yellow light went out, and the ultraviolet black light came on. Hundreds of giant optic-yellow spiders glowed in their shimmering golden webs.

•  •  •

Regarding my personal doorway spider: Flex the Guard Cat protected her all autumn into winter by keeping birds at bay. As with E.B. White's Charlotte, my Jorōgumo began to slow down. Willow oak leaves littered her web, and for days she was in the same place, one leg slowly crooking up and down. Her tiny mate had long disappeared. On December 20th, she seemed not to move. On December 21st, as I was packing the car for two weeks of travel, I reached up and took her lifeless form from the disintegrating cobweb and put her in a jar.  Grateful for her inspiration.

Andy Offutt Irwin is a humorist and touring storyteller who brings to the stage the adventures of his fictional aunt, Marguerite Van Camp, M.D. He lives in Covington, GA. Pester him at andy@andyirwin.com.