I read somewhere that the average human consumes eight spiders per year. Honestly, I'm not even sure that I personally read that statistic somewhere – or if it's just one of those widely accepted “facts” that are of origins untraceable but gets passed along and repeatedly offered up as food for thought in boring conversations with brainless people you could never talk to about real topics.
Whether or not I can recall absorbing the information from a legitimate source, like Wikipedia or a Snapple cap - I, too, have accepted it as fact.
There are three ways in which a person could consume a spider: Unconsciously, Accidentally, and, (ew) Consciously.
A conscious consumer would knowingly put spiders in their mouths, and swallow them. It isn't as though I've ever consciously eaten a spider, so I must be eating them unconsciously or accidentally. But what about the people who do consciously eat spiders? Is the statistical average taking into account the people who eat bags full of deep fried tarantulas or is it not counting the Asians? This shit really happens – watch more NatGeo. It would be really comforting to know that they were being counted, because that would mean the average is being driven up and in truth, people like me aren't really eating any spiders.
However, if you consider the type of people throwing around this factoid – eight is not the number your average eating-bags-full-o-spiders kind of person would use anyway. The guys standing in line waiting for a big paper sack full of crispy crunchy spider snacks would probably say the average human eats eighty spiders a year. Or eight-hundred, I don't how much they eat that shit – is it a few times a month thing like french fries? Or a once a year deal like fried oysters? Anyway, the eight spiders a year has got be referring to first-world inhabitants who suffer accidental and unconscious ingestion only.
Besides, there are some spiders that just have that kamikaze look about them. There are a few tell-tale signs to look for in your household spiders. Just like a depressed person, the suicidal spider spends the day in a darkened room, listening to Morrissey and writing in his journal. He only comes out at night to roam the ceiling alone and engage in self-destructive behavior. Finally, friendless and drug-addicted, all eight eyes clouded with a distant haunted gaze that hints at a life of regrets, he weaves his last little silken butt-rope and lowers himself into his final resting place.
Which brings us to the unconscious consumer. This person would be a nocturnal mouth-breather with lips that represent last hope for a suicidal spider. I've thought of steps to prevent myself from being a part of this group:
Mouth Guards: too uncomfortable, restricts breathing.
Mosquito Netting: feels like a Malaria den in Africa and spiders aren't idiot mosquitos and could probably figure out how to get around the stuff.
Sleeping with a panty-hose over my head: even though it makes me look really cool, it kind of freaks out my husband.
Since none of these options really work for me, I resort to endlessly torturing myself with my own thoughts. If I see a spider on the ceiling before I turn out the lights I immediately think, “Are you one of my eight? Am I going to eat you in my sleep, Spider?” And depending on how lazy I am, I either make my husband get rid of it or muster the courage myself – to ignore it. If I ignore it, and in the morning it's nowhere to be found I try to tell myself, “It just went into the window, or the wall...It wasn't rock bottom for that guy just yet. He ended his night with listening to an uplifting Belle and Sebastian song, and went home to write an hope-filled journal entry that he will later criticize for being naïve.” And I tell myself that the dry-throat, morning-mouth is just a result of sleeping with the window open on a windy night – it is definitely not the remnants of a spider corpse.
The pre-bed spider sighting can incite some pretty big internal debates. Even though I'm afraid the spider on the ceiling is contemplating suicide and may end up as my midnight snack, I still try to avoid making my husband do the deed because he's painfully slow and humane about it. Sometimes precious, impatient Sleep begs me to just let it go so as to not watch the guilty performance that will ensue. Maybe I should get him an executioner's mask for de-spidering. The anonymity may curtail how many times I wait up for him to complete his catch-and-release method. Notice I never said I would have him “kill” it... He usually spends about five to ten minutes searching for the perfect Tupperware- container-and-magazine combination to trap the spider with... and another couple of minutes carefully coaxing it out into a favorable area of the yard. Although, he does kill some of them – he says, “Some are too big to let go. They might recognize me later.”
So, really while I may be saving myself from losing up to thirteen minutes of sleep, I'm also saving my husband the guilt of turning some poor undeserving “little guy” into a homeless backyard refugee. And besides – how many spiders really crawl into people's mouths while they sleep anyway? Really, I would like to see some numbers.
I think probably most of the eight yearly spider snacks happen accidentally. Accidental spider consumers would dumbly eat spiders in unwashed produce and uncovered soups. Think about how many times you didn't wash that lettuce because you were pretty sure it was organic, and you were going to chop it up into small pieces anyway. What about Aunt Whatever's All-Day Pot Roast? That sits on the stove for hours... you think nothing gets in there? Accidental Consumers would laugh wide-mouthed and unknowing while BASE jumping BASE is an acronym that stands for the places from which BASE jumpers often leap from... Buildings, Antennas, Spans (bridges) and Earth (cliffs). This is a really stupid acronym. So, so stupid. spiders meet doom stuck to their uvula. We could also count the tiny spiders that get into all the candy bars and... other stuff... made in factories that have high dusty ceilings, and workers that don't get paid enough at their factory job to give a shit about the “foreign content” reports they see posted in the break room. Accidental consumption has got to amount to quite a few of our eight yearly spiders.
If the statistic is true – you could say I've eaten more spiders in my life than a lot of things that I actually enjoy eating. It's really disappointing to think I have had more occasions of ingesting a spider than I have had of ingesting a slice of German Chocolate Cake, or Lobster tail and butter, or Egg Nog.
Now all I can think about is getting my hands on some Egg Nog, and it's only August.
But seriously, how come we can't accidentally consume a slice of cake? Or anything that's not a shitty spider? And what's the caloric intake of a spider? They've got to be pretty high in protein or something.
Maybe that's why I'm getting fat... lots of spiders in these parts. Man, I really should lay off these spiders...
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