Zebra Spider

After I arrive home from work every day, I make my way to our mailbox to check the damage. Our mailbox fits seamlessly with the house’s decor and is a simple black mailbox nailed to an untreated 2×4, held into its white utility bucket stand with hardened gray cement. While I know most of the much loathed black box’s contents will be bills or credit card offers, I am always excited for my People magazines on Friday afternoons, and the assortment of free samples that arrive bi-weekly. I still like to hold on to the belief that one day my publisher’s clearinghouse winning entry will pass through the metal junk receptacle, and accordingly, I collect the United States Postal Service’s offerings on a daily basis.

I noticed a few weeks ago that we have been sharing our snail mail holder with a member of the phylum Arthropoda, most specifically the Arachnid class. I, like most humans I know, am not a big fan of bugs, especially ones with 4 sets of legs. I can handle the spiders with the toothpick legs that occasionally make their home in the ceiling corners, but the mailbox spider is a whole other story. It is not the size of the 8 legged terror that bothers me, but instead it is the black and white striped pattern on his exoskeleton that causes me to rip the mail from the box as quickly as possible.

I am really not sure how the little creepy-crawly has managed to survive the daily mail deliveries – I guess having your skeleton on the outside of your body would be helpful. Every time I open the box the zebra spider is in the same place in the back right corner of the box completely unharmed; sometimes he even has enough time between the mail delivery and my arrival home to start making a little web with the mail pieces. As long as our symbiotic relationship can continue as it has been there will be no problem, and I will spare the life of the halloweenish beast that calls my mailbox home. The millisecond I see a fang poke out of his hairy mouth or poisonous venom residue on my PennySaver the relationship is over and I will be forced to have Butterfinger exterminate the strange visitor (I certainly can not kill a spider!).