Into the Tangled Bank

1 HOME, SWEET HOME

In which our author goes toe to antenna with creepies, crawlies, jumpies and munchies – our nearest neighbours, for better or for worse

It’s just sitting there, sizing me up, poised to pounce should the need arise. In normal circumstances the need wouldn’t arise, and we could both get on with our respective days: me answering emails and going to the shops, and it sitting in the sink for a while before mysteriously disappearing and then coming out at night and dancing a jig on my slumbering face.*

But I need to do the washing up, so disturb it I must.

Some people, I dare say, would flush it down the sink; others – harder-hearted, crueller, but also quicker – might dispatch it with a quick blow from a suitable implement; my preferred method, honed throughout a childhood in a house with innumerable shady crevices, is to coax it onto a square of kitchen paper, and hope it doesn’t make a bid for freedom up my sleeve while I carry it to pastures new.

Despite my assertion above, it isn’t poised to pounce. Nor is it sizing me up. The giant house spider (Eratigena atrica) has eight eyes, for sure, but its grasp of detail is weak – if it’s aware of me it’s as an amorphous shape in the distance rather than as a looming existential threat. And while the set of its legs gives the impression it’s ready to spring into action at the slightest provocation, its instinct is to retreat from humans, not launch itself into a frenzied attack. If its presence in our sink is motivated by anything other than lust, the likeliest reason I can think of is that it enjoys the cool feeling of porcelain on its feet.

This spider is most likely to be a male on the pull, roaming the highways and byways of our house on the lookout for a mate: ‘Male Eratigena atrica seeks female same species. Must have: GSOH, willingness to mate repeatedly, innate desire to devour body of deceased partner. No time-wasters.’

Left to its own devices it’ll leave the sink soon enough and find a nice neglected corner, where it’ll spin a sheet-like web and wait for insects, quietly and undramatically playing its own small part in the management of our domestic ecosystem.

Keen to procrastinate, and even keener to make use of the nifty ‘close-focus’ binoculars I’ve recently bought for just such a purpose, I bend down and look at the spider more closely. There’s a fascination in its absolute stillness, the asymmetric angles of its splayed legs, and the knowledge that those delicate limbs are capable of propelling it at a speed to put the fright up any watching humans.* Through the binoculars I can examine the subtle variations in its colouring – it’s mostly dark brown, but the ends of its legs morph to black, and there are pale spots on its abdomen. Both these features are also covered with fine hairs.

It’s a toss-up whether this close examination makes the spider more or less intimidating. Seeing it magnified to this extent brings to mind the old question of whether you’d rather fight one horse-sized duck or a hundred duck-sized horses, and the thought of substituting spiders into that old meme is enough to send shivers down even this arachnophile’s spine. But I shove such thoughts to one side and concentrate merely on observing it.

The art of observation is elusive. Here is a thing. What does it look like? Sound like? Smell like?^† What, if anything, is it doing? Why is it doing or not doing it? What might it do or not do next?

It’s all too easy to be sucked into the superficiality of ‘tick and move on’, as if merely having seen something is in itself an achievement, somehow making you a better person. But for all that a sighting brings its own frisson, there’s a deeper satisfaction to be found in a more detailed observation, even if the object in question, like this spider, is to all intents and purposes doing nothing.

There’s a lot to be said for the mesmerising quality of an animal – from heron to hedgehog – just being still, following the timeless zen advice: don’t just do something, stand there. At the very least, the mere act of spending time in the creature’s company lends familiarity; and this kind of familiarity, rather than breeding contempt, increases my level of comfort with this spider’s presence, reduces its otherness, and makes me more prepared to accept it as part of my daily life. This thing before me is normal, not strange.

What is strange, or at least might appear so to the casual observer, is the sight of a middle-aged man staring at a pile of washing-up through a pair of binoculars, but in my absorption I’m comfortable with that thought. Let the record show my strangeness for all to see.

I put the binoculars down, fetch the kitchen roll and slide a single sheet deftly under the spider. It scuttles away for a second, but I persist, and soon it is sitting calmly enough on its new papery resting spot. Master anthropomorphist that I am, I toy briefly with giving it a name. Sid, perhaps. But that way madness lies. Start naming all the insects in the house and I’ll run out of names before sundown.

I put it to one side and do the washing-up.

Whether we like it or not, we share our homes with other species: dust mites, lurking in our mattresses; silverfish, feeding off food scraps and scuttling off behind the skirting board; fruit flies, appearing as if from nowhere at the first sign of a half-mushy banana; daddy-long-legs, flapping about melodramatically near light bulbs; house flies, buzzing around aimlessly and failing to go out through the window you’ve pointedly opened for just such a purpose; ladybirds, yellowjackets, black ants, bedbugs, earwigs, centipedes, mosquitoes, weevils, cockroaches, woodworm, death-watch beetles, biscuit beetles, bacon beetles, cellar beetles, grain beetles, flour beetles, absolutely bloody everything beetles. Millions and millions of the little buggers, and that’s without even mentioning parasites such as head lice * and fleas, or the eight-legged mites that make their homes and graves in our eyebrows, or the host of bacteria in our gut.

And breathe.

Whatever the species – and rest assured it’s deeply unlikely you’ll be infested with more than, ooh, let’s say half a dozen of the abovenamed at any one time – all the evidence points to one conclusion: we’re not that keen.

The reasons for this aversion are deep-seated. Ever since humans shelved their nomadic ways and settled into the routine of tilling the land and generally staying in the same place, we’ve created environments – dry, warm, food-filled, or a mixture of all three – that have appealed in some way to other species. And historically a lot of these species have been a nuisance: they’ve eaten our food, given us diseases and even destroyed our buildings. Some of them bite us, causing symptoms ranging from mild discomfort to death. Others wriggle or crawl or squirm or just sit there in our sinks, their very existence causing us discomfort or revulsion in ways we find difficult to articulate beyond saying, ‘I just can’t stand them’, and giving a horrified shudder.

The extent to which we’re averse to our uninvited guests depends partly on personal preference. We each have our own level of tolerance for ickiness, and apply it in different ways. Someone who quakes at the thought of an earwig might show surprising calmness when confronted with a bumblebee trapped in a window, for example; and a person whose reaction to a wasp’s nest in the loft is the entirely rational ‘well, they’ve been there all summer without causing us any problems, and they’ll be gone in a couple of weeks, so I might as well leave them’, might also be the first to start back in shock and revulsion at the sight of a mouse scurrying across the kitchen floor. The definition of ‘pest’ is different for everyone.

Quantity plays its part in shaping our reaction. Calm as I was about Sid’s presence in the sink, my sang would have been somewhat less froid had he brought a couple of dozen friends along. And while I’m perfectly content to share my space with these octo-podded little scamperers – just as long as rapid scuttling is kept to a minimum * – I wouldn’t go so far as to keep a spider as a pet; a position shared, I might add, by more than 99 per cent of the population. True arachnophobia – irrational and crippling fear, a condition not to be dismissed lightly – is rare, but spiders do cause anxiety in many people who, in their rational moments, will happily concede they know them to be harmless.^† This anxiety is no doubt rooted in the remnants of some primeval instinct that prompts us, on seeing the dreaded foe, to run steve RUN FAR RUN FAST IT’S GONNA KILL YOU.

This demonisation of spiders isn’t helped by the newspapers, for whom all arachnids are bundled into a sinister bag marked ‘hysteria trigger’.

The unfounded frothing about the various Steatoda species lumped with the name ‘false widow spider’ is a case in point. They are, it is true, venomous. But then so are all spiders, to an extent – it’s how they kill their prey. But that venom – enough to kill a fly and inflict pain or irritation on humans – isn’t really a reason to fear them, because rare is the British spider that has the ability to deliver an effective bite. Our skin is thick and rough, and their jaws just aren’t up to it.*

But the tabloids don’t care about that.

The true narrative – British spiders are harmless to humans and in fact play an important role in healthy local ecosystems – is far less dramatic than the false one: THE POISONOUS BASTARDS ARE COMING TO GET YOU CLOSE EVERYTHING DOWN AND RUN AROUND IN A BLIND PANIC THEN KILL THEM SMASH THEM.

At a time when we need, more than ever, to be aware of the natural world and understand our role in it, it’s a depressing state of affairs.

But if spiders are maligned, then spare a thought for the common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). Target of many a rolled-up newspaper or picnic waft, they are singularly unloved in the insect world. And all because they’re attracted to your apple and blackberry tartlet.

Well, not just that. The stinging doesn’t help. A wasp sting is painful, and often seems unprovoked. We don’t regard flapping a pest off the aforementioned tartlet as a provocative act – we just want to protect our food. But all the wasp sees is an unidentified predator attacking it for no good reason. This is just one of many examples of how wildly human and vespine perspectives on life diverge.

It’s different with bees. Bees, with their waggle dances, honey and pollinating, are regarded as benevolent. Our affection for them is even reflected in the name many people use as a blanket term: bumblebee.* That word, ‘bumble’, is redolent of a sort of well-meaning clumsiness, almost as if they’ve survived this long on the planet by mistake, wandering around the garden for 120 million years looking for their glasses without realising they’re on their head.

Compare our contrasting reactions to bees and wasps: when we find a bee in the house we usher it out with solicitude and gentleness; find a wasp and we squash it.* And yet we’re more likely to be seriously hurt by a honey-bee attack than by a wasp sting. If you’re unlucky enough to be stung by the latter, it will hurt a bit, but swatting the insect away thereafter will be enough to send it packing, and its cohorts generally take a laissez-faire attitude to the suffering of one of their number. Take the same action for a honey-bee sting and it amounts to a call to arms. The bee will die, leaving its sting in your flesh and releasing a scent that the rest of the hive recognises as a signal to attack the enemy.

That’s you.

And at that point things can get serious, although it’s fair to say the risks are higher if you’re a person who spends a lot of time with bees.

Nevertheless, the wasp persecution persists, based on a widespread belief that they contribute nothing to society. Because they don’t make honey (a failing common to many other species) or pollinate (not strictly true – there are several species of pollinating wasp), we regard them as useless layabouts – especially the ones you find drunkenly crawling across the sitting-room carpet at the end of the season. So it’s good to know that many species of social wasp are useful in the garden, predating smaller insects often regarded as pests. Fling that in the face of any wasp-haters you meet.

Any resentment we harbour for wasps is multiplied for hornets, simply on the basis of size. The relatively recent incursion of the darker Asian hornets – a predatory species capable of wiping out a whole bee colony single-handedly – has muddied the waters, but the fact remains that the vast majority of these much maligned species present far less danger to humans than we’ve been brought up to believe.

If we find it difficult to dredge up sympathy for wasps and hornets, surely we can find it within ourselves to pity the poor hoverflies (Volucella zonaria, to name but one)? There might be sound evolutionary reasons for their resemblance to wasps * – it’s a handy trick to avoid predation – but it seems a less wise move when the sight of one leads a skittish human to reach for the rolled-up magazine at the merest glimpse. Never mind that they’re completely harmless – and, as outdoor insects, trying to get out of the house, not into it – squish them we must.

Similarly, the woodlouse (Oniscus asellus) can find itself trapped in an environment not to its liking. You’re most likely to find these lovable little land-dwelling crustaceans under a log, or somewhere else that provides the moisture they need to survive. But they’re not equipped to deal with extremes of either wet or dry, so heavy rainfall will see them scuttling towards the shelter of human habitation, where all too often they succumb to dehydration brought on by excessive warmth. So if you see a woodlouse indoors, the most helpful thing you can do is to usher it outdoors with a gentle but unyielding hand.

This benevolent St Francis attitude is all very well, but sometimes it makes sense to harden the heart a little. When animals get into your food supply, there’s Health and Safety to consider, not to mention the small matter of survival.

While I take the presence of a caterpillar in the lettuce as a sign that my food has been grown in an environmentally sensitive way (not to mention the opportunity to enhance my diet with a bit of free protein), I would baulk at welcoming a bacon beetle (Dermestes lardarius) into the provisions cupboard. These creatures (and others of the larder beetle family) were quite the thing back in the day, before the advent of modern packaging, their determination to get at the food enabling them to burrow their way through wood. And you probably don’t want me to tell you about the grain weevil’s (Sitophilus granarius) habit of drilling a hole into grain seeds and laying its eggs in the hole, from where the invisible carnage can take root.

But if we’re less likely, in these days of enhanced kitchen hygiene, to open a cupboard and find an infestation in our food supply, there are still plenty of tiny chompers out there prepared to make our lives a misery in their own special way.

Take, if you will, Tineola bisselliella. You might know it better as the clothes moth.*

And already I can hear the swearing.

Because no matter how attuned to nature we are, no matter how much we believe that all life is equal, no matter how diligently we adhere to the principles that underpin an ethical and cruelty-free lifestyle, clothes moths are bastards and there’s an end to it.

You might defend Tineola bisselliella, as I occasionally have, with the observation that in chomping its way through your favourite jumper, this moth is merely fulfilling its role in a complex and multi-layered ecological system, and that surely we can set aside our personal despair at the loss of a much loved article of clothing to revel in their position as a fascinating example of the biodiversity that has evolved over 3.5 billion years on this planet – but that argument is easily countered by the pithy observation that sod that, I paid eighty quid for that sweater.

Strictly speaking we shouldn’t direct our wrath towards the moth itself. Adult clothes moths are merely shagging machines – their only role in their short life is to reproduce. They don’t need to eat – they’re still full from that sock they gorged on as a larva, and, besides, their mouths have atrophied – and once their reproductive business is done, they just sit on your wall and wait to die. The damage is done by the larvae, for whom ideal conditions include warmth, a touch of moisture, and natural fibres infused with organic fluids such as human sweat. No wonder they like your jumpers. It doesn’t help our anti-clothes-moth agenda that we make it easy for them by keeping our houses at the perfect temperature for an accelerated life cycle. And with egg clusters of up to two hundred, an ability to spin mats under which they can hide to avoid detection, and an un-moth-like preference for the dark and shady, their abundance in modern centrally heated homes and resistance to human intervention is no surprise.

As with any insect designated as a pest, you can take action to get rid of it. Chemicals * are the preferred option for many people, but other, gentler methods include freezing, asphyxiation, burning, moving to Antarctica, or never wearing any clothes ever again. Sticky pheromone traps pull off a neat little quantum trick by accumulating a decent collection of dead moths while not apparently having any impact on the level of infestation. Old-school remedies such as lavender bags and red-cedar balls make your drawers smell nice but that’s about it, the levels of concentration required to have an effect being much higher than those admittedly attractive options are able to offer.

Taken out of the context of causing widespread, albeit low-level, human misery, Tineola bisselliella is rather attractive in its own way. It’s a member of the subcategory ‘micromoths’,* so is what professional lepidopterists call ‘pretty small’ (about 6 mm). It catches the eye as a buff-coloured blemish on the skirting board, but if the light falls on it in a certain way it shows up an ochreous lustre that in other circumstances (in the plumage of a golden plover, say) would induce a small sigh of satisfaction. But, as already discussed, the sighting of a clothes moth isn’t ‘other circumstances’, and even the most ardent animal-lover’s tolerance will surely be stretched to the limit by their predations.

The common theme here is the dividing line between humans and nature. We build buffer zones around us, permitting access only to the chosen few. The home is a place for humans, not nature. It’s our sacred space – intruders not welcome.^† It would be great if we could brush away all our prejudices and misunderstandings, and see things as if for the first time, with a sense of curiosity and wonder. What is this and why is it and what does it do?

Difficult as it can be to remember when your sweater’s been chomped or your arm’s been stung or there’s a writhing mass of ick in the corner of the bedroom, these creatures aren’t being this way because they’re vindictive towards humans; they’re just trying to get along in a harsh and cruel world. And that’s something I think we can all identify with.

* They definitely don’t do this. OR DO THEY?

* Half a metre a second, give or take, which scales up to a gazillion miles an hour. But these bursts of speed, one of the contributing factors to some people’s fear of spiders, are understandably brief.

^† Nature stimulates all the senses. This is why I refer to ‘birding’ rather than ‘birdwatching’ – do all those chirrits and wirbles and twiddly-doo-wops I’ve heard from the depth of the bush, without ever laying eyes on the bird, not count?

* It turns out they do prefer clean hair – it’s not a myth perpetuated by children with head lice to fend off mockery and ostracisation.

* A rule, I should add, I apply equally rigorously to myself.

^† In the UK, at least. There are many parts of the world where venomous spiders are common enough to be considered a threat to public health, but Britain isn’t one of them. Even in Australia, embedded in British imaginations as a hotbed of fearsome arachnids, actual fatalities from spider bites are vanishingly rare.

^‡ Not to be confused with the daddy-long-legs mentioned above, also known as craneflies.

* The same, incidentally, goes for the house centipede (Scutigera coleoptrata), bless its dozens of cotton socks. It’s potentially alarming in appearance, what with all the legs and everything, and surprisingly speedy if given its head, but its jaws aren’t big enough to exert a grip on any part of the human anatomy.

* There are twenty-four species of bumblebee in Britain, of which eight are widespread.

* You don’t. You’re nice. I mean people in general.

* The same applies, incidentally, to a fair few species of moth, too.

* It has a cousin, the case-bearing clothes moth (Tinea pellionella) – different name, same effect.

* None of which are in any way detrimental to human health. Nope, definitely not.

* Don’t be gulled into thinking this necessarily means they’re smaller than ‘normal’ moths. Most are, but some aren’t.

^† Except when it comes to miniature lions and wolves – we’ll let any number of those into our lives. We love cats and dogs to the point of species-wide self-delusion. Humans congratulate themselves on their relationship with cats and dogs, imagining fondly that they have domesticated them, when to any objective observer the truth is quite clearly the other way round.