Dear Mrs. Spider,

First of all, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for crafting such beautiful webs outside my kitchen window. I love to see the morning dew caught in your webs, or see you busy at work adding on to your humble abode. I have enjoyed our one sided conversations and appreciate the ear you have lent. Oh, and the extra bugs taken out by your hunger has been noted as well. But this is where the niceties end.

This is your official notice to stop and desist, move it or loose it, time-to-get-out-of-Dodge notice; if not you will be squished. I hope you take the daily paper and can read so I don’t have to have this conversation with you from the kitchen window or back deck within ear shot of my neighbors; then they will really know how crazy I am.

I was all for cohabitation until, for some unknown reason, you chose to expand your home into the area surrounding the French doors on my back deck. Maybe there was a better food supply near the light, or maybe there was a better view — to be honest, I am not sure. Whatever the case, you have caused me great angst and unrest.

Earlier this week, I hurried out the doors with trash bag in hand to find myself bound up in a huge web you had spun — not one or two threads, but seemingly hundreds. I felt that sticky web across my face and in my eyelashes and up my nose.

After much flailing around and a failed attempt at muffled profanity, I dropped the garbage bag to wipe off my face. The garbage bag split open upon hitting the deck floor, and, because my eyes were closed as I was attempting to remove the webbing from my eyelashes, I missed the gooey mess oozing out from the now split-open trash bag, slipped and then fell into the mess.

Half crying, half yelling and wondering what other cooties might be stuck to me from your web and the trash, I had to head back upstairs to wash it all off. I had all kinds of evil thoughts and conspiracy theories running through my head as I tried to rid myself of your web.

Cleaned up, redressed and trash picked up, I went on over to your web in the window, thinking I might in fact squish you. I then realized, it probably wasn’t your fault; you weren’t in fact doing this to me on purpose. I thought of another famous spider, Charlotte, and all the good she had done with her webs. OK, maybe I wouldn’t squish you just yet.

However, you have done it again. It was way too late at night, and the dog needed to go run around the yard at 1:30 a.m., so I humored him. Yes, I opened that back door to walk right back into another one of your webs. After another shower and lingering creepy feeling, I was left wondering if you got into the house in the fray or got stuck somewhere in my hair.  We are going to have to have a “come to Jesus” meeting about the location of your webs.

So, thanks for the memories, thanks for the free extermination and web protection services, but you have worn out your welcome. Keep it to the kitchen window or move off of my property.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, with sincere gratitude for services rendered, Gillian Pollock (the crazy lady who slips in trash).

A Yankee with a Southern soul, Gillian Pollock is a wife, mother of two ever-challenging children and director of Christian Formation at Saint Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington.