little friends

Look who is showing up outside my cube window these days. It is hard to get a clean picture of him because he is always silhouetted against the fall colors, but it is kind of nice to have him buzzing in and out for his quick snacks. It definitely adds something nice to my afternoons.

Not all of my small friends are so lucky. For example, I am not really afraid of spiders, but something kind of unfortunate happened last night. I was writing some e-mail and I noticed a smallish pale-colored spider climbing down the right side of my computer monitor. As soon as I realized he was no threat to me, I ignored him. Soon enough, he climbed across the front of my monitor from the left side to the right. Again, I let him pass.

A few minutes later, the little spider was directly in front of me stopped and oriented so that I could see his little eyes. As I examined him, he pulled in his legs to make himself look more compact. I puffed some air onto him in order to get him off of my workspace and that was the last time I saw him. Well, it was the last time I saw him alive anyway.

I have a computer mouse similar to those little optical mice in that it rests directly on the mousing surface. There is a small amount of felt-like material covering the bottom of the mouse so that it moves smoothly across the designated surface. It had been several minutes since I had seen my spider friend and I was beginning to wonder if he had crawled up my sleeve. When I lifted my arm, I saw something disturbing on the formerly smooth mouse pad.

There was what appeared to be a small slick that might have been a tiny quantity of peanut-butter. I knew immediately what I was looking at. When I picked up the mouse, there were the remains of my new friend. His delicate little legs were flat against the bottom surface of the mouse. "Idiot" I whispered as I cleaned up the mess. He didn't realize how lucky he was to have wandered into my workspace instead of the desk of someone less tolerant of his kind. But he managed to get himself killed anyway.