By

Craig Ennew

—

Thirty-Eight: Two Legs Good, Eight Legs Bad

This week: Craig and his family embrace new multi-legged tenants at The Shack

One of the main reasons for moving to Dorset was to be closer to Nature. While Salisbury had hardly been a migraine-inducing metropolis, it provided urban challenges: city sirens, decade-long bypass debates, the occasional Russian spy poisoning.

Therefore, we set our sights south, for lofty cliffs, the gentle lull of a morning tide, benign seals bobbing off the coastline and seagulls pinching people’s crab goujons.

But no-one told us about the spiders.

Just as our new home, affectionately known as The Shack, had started smartening itself up and was adjusting to an unholy trinity of city-dwellers, so had it also, unbeknown to us, welcomed a sizeable commune of eight-legged tenants.

In the early days, sleeping on bare mattresses upon a dusty floor, we had tolerated – even adjusted to – those spindly ‘cellar spiders’ that lounge in the corners, barely moving a limb. A quick whizz around each room with the nozzle of the hoover would suffice – if we could even be bothered. Which we rarely could.

Since we’ve come back from our holiday in Malaysia, though, a new beast has emerged from the shadows.

Unbridled fear

When back in Kuala Lumpur at the end of July, The Boy and I observed a giant monitor lizard crawling out of a sewage pipe in the area behind our holiday complex at Redang Beach. The thing was the size of a border collie, but slunk along with considerably more menace. Whilst both fascinating and hideous, it still failed to instil in me the unbridled fear that the British common house spider – or Eratigena atrica as it is known – can induce. Reader, I don’t fully understand my terror. Perhaps it comes from the shadows they cast on the wall; maybe it’s the speed with which they move (I have no doubt that Ridley Scott was inspired by these monsters in creating his Alien franchise). Either way, the fear is very real.

Monster: Eratigena atrica

My wife shares my phobia. In the early days of our relationship, we lived in a section of a barn conversion north of Salisbury. Despite being a regular feature of the later Summer months, our leggy friends turned us both into gibbering wrecks. I figured I had to “man up” a little if I was ever going to be a keeper. But let’s be honest here: I was never going to be a “let’s pop the wee little fella under a glass and set him free into the garden” kind of person. We both needed to see those bad boys (and yes – they are always masculine) dead and flushed down the khazi if we were to get a decent night’s sleep.

The arrangement therefore goes thus: my wife is often the spotter. This is a person who, throughout the year, will cautiously remove her dressing gown from the peg of the bedroom door before giving it a damned good shaking in an attempt to evict any imagined eight-legged hangers-on. Slippers will be inspected, walls will be swept with the torch from her phone, like the beam of a searchlight calling out an errant convict. This sequence often culminates in her quietly calling, “Oh, Craig…” in much the same way that Richard Dreyfuss says, “Oh, boys…” when the massive flank of the great white hits the sides of their meagre boat in the movie Jaws. My friends, I know that tone of voice instantly.

Errant convict

I, in turn, am the unwilling executioner: Robert Shaw to her Dreyfuss, if you will (and we all know how that ends). Eyes on the victim, I select my weapon of choice – normally a shoe of sorts – and timidly advance for the kill. With house spiders, you only have one chance. Miss your target, and the little jiggers flee, only to pop up somewhere totally unexpected fifteen minutes later. Once dispatched though, the corpse can be wiped from the wall with a huge handful of tissue, to be immediately flushed down the loo. It has to be immediate. My wife will always ask, “Is it gone?” – to which I reply (in a manner that in no way invites ambiguity) “It is indeed an ex-spider, my love.” If I miss it, for my shame, I have to tell her so. I cannot lie for fear of the little bastard reappearing and creating merry hell that threatens to precede divorce. On these occasions, I must face my failure full on, like the returning kamikaze pilot, or Gareth Southgate missing a crucial penalty. And then , I cannot leave my post until the deed is finally done.

Spider season has now hit South Dorset. And it is so much worse than anything we encountered slightly further north. Furthermore, Autumn brings the rains… and the beasts come scuttling for shelter and arachnid procreation. Recently, we found something evil crouching outside the bathroom door. The Boy came out of his bedroom and screamed like a blood-curdling banshee. Now, if we find one, we must erase it before he knows of its existence – for we cannot go through that again.

In the last week, I have slain two or three per evening upon request. They span the walls like demons, haunting the crevices of our nightmares. Frequently, I am poised with flip-flop in hand, a terrified assassin awaiting his next kill. Our newly-plastered walls, now smeared with spidey-juice, are starting to resemble those of Buffalo Bill’s basement from Silence of the Lambs. The spiders seem to get bigger and more terrifying – only two days ago, a spider materialises on our bedroom wall like a hideous phantom, mercifully on the one near my wife’s side of the bed. Responding to the dread cry of, “Oh, Craig…”, I creep forward, following the direction of her trembling finger. There, a beast the size of my fist cowls in the shadows, ready to leap at, and perhaps even consume my ashen face.

“Christ.” I mutter.

My wife remains silent for a moment. The spider twitches. Only then does she says: “I think you’re gonna need a bigger flip-flop.”

Post-script: since writing this, I have learned that the flimsy cellar spiders will often trap and consume their larger “house” cousins. I have put the hoover attachment away.

©Craig Ennew 2025

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2 responses to “Thirty-Eight: Two Legs Good, Eight Legs Bad”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    I really enjoyed this! Thank you Craig!

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    1. Craig Ennew Avatar
      Craig Ennew

      You’re welcome!

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