Entomofuntimes

So the other night there was a gargantuan daddy long-legs lurking opposite me in bed, skittering occasionally in that freaky, unpredictable way that they're generally wont to do.

'What's up?' asks my girlfriend.

I point, with quaking finger and rictus of horror towards the flapping, twitching agent of evil framed against the white wall opposite.

'Oh it's only a daddy long-legs', she laughs.

'Only a daddy long-legs??' say I, 'Don't they freak you out, all spindly and bobbing about before they land and feast on your flesh?'

'Well... no', says the reasonable female opinion.

'But you're terrified of spiders, you curl up in a quivering ball at the sight of one.'

'Well yes,' she says, 'But spiders seem like they're on a mission, like they're going to climb into my brain while I'm sleeping.'

See, I like spiders. I genuinely do. Maybe I've just been brainwashed by the airbrushed mug of Toby Maguire clad in gleaming spandex, but they've always seemed like the intrepid little vigilantes of the insect world. Who else would stand up to the buzzing clouds of sandwich-bothering pestilence if not our arachnid friends?

Yes, I've seen Arachnophobia, but I refuse to be swayed. See, it's their very sense of purpose that warms me to our eight-legged comrades so much. When I see one passing by, his intent doesn't trouble me, no. If anything it soothes me that all is right in the world, and I respectfully doff my cap to it as one might a passing policeman. When I see a spider crawling from one place to another I see not malicious intent, but a neighbour popping out for a paper. They may well have eight legs, but by god, at least they favour good, honest locomotion. None of this buzzing, flapping and wheeling randomly around the room stuff, missing all the open windows and keeping you awake. And frankly, this means that at any given time spiders will always be at a fair distance from my face, so everybody wins.

Other than being the frenzied, evil heralds of Beelzebub, flies also freak me out and annoy me for a different reason. As with the daddy long-legs, they seem to have absolutely no raison d'etre other than to throw themselves wildly against bright colours and vomit on your food in a chaotic orgy of pointless, random buzzing. They're the very epitome of entropy, of the second law of thermodynamics. Not only do they eat rotting food or excreta (and, fair play, I'll excuse the daddy long-legs on that part, they actually eat nectar), they live brief, 24-hour lives only to frantically breed and die. At least the spider creates. At least there's some artistry in what he does.

It reminds me a little of the first chapter of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday wherein Gabriel Syme - the undercover police poet - confronts the wild, anarchist poet Lucian Gregory in Saffron Park:

“It is things going right,” he cried, “That is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick.”

And flies really make me sick.