I got home from my trip around 10pm and walked up to my dark porch. As I set down my luggage and took out my keys I felt a spider web on my arm. Calmly brushed it away (look how grown-up I am now!), looked down and saw a golden, wriggling mass of legs and body by my foot. Went into full-on freak-out mode: jazz hands up, bounding down the porch, and all the gibbering screams of terror poured out of my wildly shaking head. My neighbor thought I was being murdered! There was so much adrenaline in my system I couldn’t calm down for 20 minutes. And I knew that garden spider had been weaving webs last week.

I’ll be leaving the porch light on and my spider-broom on the steps from now until Fall.