Backyard life and death

I got home from teaching today and my wife informed me that the yard really needed to be taken care of. Not only has the dog been missing since last week, but the neighbor's two children chased a ball into our yard and have not been seen since. The exaggeration here is mild at best. So, putting on my best 'I am mildly pissed off but I love you and will do anything to please you' face I trudged out to the garage to see if I could coax the Craftsman Turd we have into some sputtering form of life so I could tame the beast that had once been a nice back yard.

The mower needs a new fuel line, but in addition to being a lazy ass, I am also a pretty cheap bastard (unless a new hardcover book or DVD limited edition laser coded collectors set comes out) so I wanted to see if I could patch the leak so I could get as much mileage out of the machine as I could. I got some epoxy, a Q-Tip, and a pair of rubber gloves and went to work. Twenty minutes later I pulled on the cord to start her up and she sputtered to life, once more saved from the brink of annihilation.

I shut the mower down and went back in to inform my wife that from now on I was to be addressed as Macgyver and given the proper respect for being the master of fixing all things mechanical. From the depths of the book she had her nose buried in, I heard something that sounded vaguely like "That's great. Now when are you going to "MACGYVER" the porch steps, the upstairs toilet, the...". I did not catch the rest as I was caught up in the heady exultation of my rugged manliness. The rest probably wasn't very important.

So I headed back outside to actually use my miraculously healed mower to begin cutting the grass when a shuffle of movement stopped me short. It was down on the ground and I just barely caught it out of the corner of my right eye. Looking for ANY excuse to delay the actual physical labor (SO much for Macgyver) I bent down to see what had caught my attention.

A beetle and a spider were caught in a life or death battle royal before my eyes. I am no arachnologist (a person who studies spiders...I know this because I looked it up on Wikkipedia, and we all know how accurate and reliable that fount of information is) so I do not know what type of spider I was looking at. It was fairly small and white, with brown markings on its back. It was latched onto a copper colored beetle that was three times it's size. It was latched onto the beetle's shoulder (yes, I know, beetles don't HAVE shoulders, but I am too lazy to hop back on Wikkipedia and find out what you call the place where a beetle's head meets it's neck) in a kung fu death grip. The beetle was flailing like hell to beat that little spider off, but the spider was having none of it. Like a drunk cowboy on a mechanical bull its tiny body was being thrashed around, but it was not losing it's grip.

I watched this go on for a few minutes, a commentator with a really bad British accent calling the fight in my head.

What does that say about me? Not only can I not perform a decent British accent out loud, I can't even imagine a good one.

As I watched I felt bad for the beetle. I have seen the Lion King so I know about the whole circle of life thing, blah, blah, blah...but I still felt bad for the little guy. He had probably been heading home after a long day of...well...doing whatever it is that beetles do for a living. The wife had probably nagged him to remember to stop and pick up a little bit of dung for her and the kids, and all he had in his mind was getting it done quickly so he could get home and fall asleep watching Lost. (What? Everyone is watching Lost these days...why not the beetle?) Then suddenly, from out of no where, this damn little spider with a Napolean complex bites into the poor guy, releasing an arachnologist knows what kind of poison into his system, and then tries to take him down. I felt for the little guy. So I reached down and grabbed a nearby twig. I took the twig and poked at the spider, trying to get it to let go of the beetle. And do you know what? That little bugger did not move an inch. In fact its two thin front legs came up in what looked like a defensive boxer's position. That littlesucker was taking me on. Legs raised like a boxer's arms, daring me to mess with it. As if saying 'Yeah, I got this beetle to take care of right now, but when I get done with him, I'll take a piece of your shoulder too'. Not being one to take attitude from anyone, especially a creature smaller than a decent sized zit, I poked again, just a little harder this time.

Spider STILL did not let go.The beetle by this time was starting to resist less and less. I figured this was because it saw I was trying to help it and wanted to assist me as much as it could. The spider, with the beetle still fixed firmly in its clutches, squared around on my twig, like it was about to make some kind of move. I had enough. I took the twig a jabbed that little SOB right on it's head. Not hard enough to kill...just to get it to let up. That did the trick. The spider let go of the beetle...THEN CAME AFTER MY TWIG! Like a batter who had just been beaned by a high fastball, that spider rushed my twig. I fell back startled, a little cry of surprise escaping my lips. Then, feeling my manhood at stake, I lunged back at the little demon, finally succeeding in sending it scurrying back to where it came from.

Wiping the sweat from my brow (Yes...honest to god sweat) I turned my attention to my little beetle friend for whom I had entered this altercation in the first place. He was moving slowly away. I smiled and wished him well. Then I got my mower and cut the grass.

The grass cutting went well. I found my dog, rescued the neighbor's kids, and even found a lost UPS guy that I was able to send on his way. On my way to put the lawn mower back I crossed the scene of the epic battle I had taken part in forty minutes before. The beetle was still there.

Dead.

Dead or sleeping, and I doubt it was sleeping.

All that hard work for nothing. In fact all I did do was piss off one tough little spider who is probably maneuvering behind my head right this very second, looking for the perfect angle to sink its fangs into my flesh.

Now there is a comforting thought to carry me off to sleep...

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