Web walking

If you are able to enjoy a brisk morning walk along North River Drive in Lilburn, Georgia, free of entangling spider webs, you’re welcome.

Since the onset of spider web season, I have been the person clearing the way for you at least three mornings a week in the pre-dawn hours. I’m not saying I’m a hero, but I’m also NOT not saying I’m a hero. I do not require remuneration, but your undying gratitude would be nice. A commemorative plaque at Lilburn City Hall and a mayoral proclamation would suffice.

I’m not the hero my neighbors deserve, but I am the hero they need.

Every year at this time I encounter so many spider webs on my morning walk with our parti poodle, Archie, that I come home looking like Frodo in Shelob’s lair (If you don’t get that reference, pause reading this post, go read J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” and “The Two Towers” until you get to the part when Frodo enters a cave filled with spider webs, laugh knowingly at my totally appropriate reference, then come back and finish reading New South Essays. Or, if you want to take the easy way out, watch “The Return of the King” movie clip I’ve conveniently linked for you.)

It’s usually around late August when I hit my first morning spider web, reminding me that I’m in for a couple of months of this irritation. The invasive Joro spider is back this year, having showed up in these parts about 10 years ago. Their webs have been particularly thick this season on account of the lack of rain and the webs’ multidimensional construction, heavy duty strand strength and expansive coverage.

Because of my height, I am extra good at stripping away the hard work of the neighborhood arachnids, hitting the ones that extend from shrubberies and tree branches above your head down into your facial zone, which everyone knows is the worst zone for coming into contact with a spider web in the dark.

The most frightening choke point on my route is a 50-foot-long pedestrian bridge that the Lilburn spider commanders have determined to be of strategic importance in their battle against humanity. There’s a street light at one end attracting flying insects, which the spiders feast upon, and the other end is shrouded in darkness, perfect for catching dorky, middle-aged dudes in chartreuse windbreakers walking their fancy poodles.

I have yet to cross the Bridge of Khazad-dûm unscathed, but everyone else is free to enjoy it each morning after I bulldoze my way through. If you want to catch the hilarious show of me waving my arms in front of me in an ungainly fashion, just be at the bridge some time between 6 and 6:10 a.m. weekdays and 8 and 8:10 a.m. on weekends. A video of this bizarre ritual would go viral on the TikTok, I’m sure.

I share my plight with the faithful readers of New South Essays because I get no sympathy from my Darling Beloved. In fact, I cannot even mention the “s-word” (“S-P-I-D-E-R”… what did you think I meant? No, it’s not the other “S-word,” a forbidden, dirty word which is, of course, “S-T-U-P-I-D”) around her because she totally freaks out.

This is the primary reason why I have to take the dogs out in the morning and at night because she cannot abide the thought of a thin filament grazing her skin. That sensation sets off a waking nightmare that ends with being attacked by a hand-sized, hairy tarantula.

This is going to sound weird, but I’m really not afraid of the spiders or the webs. Now before you go pinning a medal of valor on me, I’m sure there exists somewhere on the vast video archives of the internet someone’s amateur, shaky-cam footage of the aforementioned middle-aged man in a chartreuse windbreaker furiously dancing around and wiping spider webs from his head and neck. But the alleged existence of such video evidence does not mean I’m scared.

Besides, everyone knows the five-second rule… no, not the one about food on the floor. I’m talking about the “Five-Second Rule of Spider Webs:” If you completely remove the web from your body within five seconds, the spider will harmless jump off and go bite a sloth or some other slow moving creature unable to clear themselves of the web within five seconds. Again, everyone knows this.

Everyone also knows that the most effective way to clear a spider web from your person is to frantically run your hands over your face sending your cap, eyeglasses and Airpods flying (hypothetically). It is not to “stop, drop and roll.” That’s something else we learned in Cub Scouts, but I’m not sure what that’s for at the moment.

So as you enjoy your autumnal morning walks, do not let the sensation of spider webs touching your skin distract you at all from the beauty of the season. Don a beekeeper’s outfit and mittens and grab a badminton racket to wave in front of you. You’ll be totally safe and not at all reported to local authorities as a “suspicious person.”

Or, you can just follow me and Archie on our route. But have your camera ready. You might just get footage that will win you first prize on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”