I was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book with my fifthgrade neighbor, Johnny Mac, when a small, gray spider walked right across the table between us.

"Well, she's got a lot of nerve," I said.

"Don't kill it!" demanded Johnny Mac, waving his arms.

"Oh, I won't," I said, standing up to get the paper cup and piece of heavy paper I use for returning creepy crawlies like this one to the great outdoors where they belong. "Spiders are too important - they eat a lot of other bugs I'd rather not see on my kitchen table."

"How come there are some many spiders around this time of year?" Johnny Mac asked, once I had deposited the spider safely outside.

"This is the time of year when they build up their webs and begin mating so they can have baby spiders."

Johnny Mac didn't respond to that comment, probably not wanting to get into such a sensitive subject with an old lady, or perhaps with anyone, for that matter. Instead he said, "I don't see what would be wrong with having a spider face. They've got a bunch of eyes and long fangs and neat stuff like that."

I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that, so I just said, "What made you think about having a spider face?"

"Momma's always sayin' 'Don't cut off your nose for spider face,' but spider faces are pretty cool," he replied, picking up his book.

I sat silently for a minute and considered explaining that the expression is actually "Don't cut off your nose to spite your face" - used to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem. But I just didn't feel like it. The truth is, I liked his expression better.

"I never thought much about spider faces, but they do seem kinda cool," I said, then added, "Which reminds me. I read an article the other day about a group of people who wove a tapestry completely out of spider silk! Can you believe it? It's on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York city."

Johnny Mac looked at me like I was crazy (with a bit of a spider face, actually), but I jumped up and got the article with pictures of the 11-by-4 foot golden tapestry. It's true. Weavers in Madagascar wove the tapestry out of silk from the golden orb-weaving spider. There are actually little machines with tiny spider harnesses for collecting the silk.

"It is beautiful," I said to Johnny Mac as we flipped through the glossy pages of the magazine together, looking at photographs of the tapestry and the spiders they used to get the silk. "It says they spent a half a million dollars and four years doing it."

Johnny Mac just stared at the photos, perhaps envisioning a miniature version of this for his next science project, or maybe just marveling at the miraculous things that can be done with unlimited amounts of time and money.

A week or so later, as I parked my car in my carport after a meeting and got out, I suddenly noticed the huge number of spider webs that seemed to have grown there over night. Every corner and cranny of the carport was filled with fine, silvery webbing and bunches of white, silky egg sacks.

That won't do, I thought to myself and went inside to get the broom. I swept away some of the webs closest to my backdoor but then I stopped. Did I really need to annihilate all of the webs? Spiders really are gentle creatures for the most part and do their part to reduce the population of the unwanted mosquitoes, ants, and flies in the neighborhood. I'd be doing myself a disservice to get rid of them, not to mention what I'd be doing to them. Maybe I'd just leave some of them up there and do my part to support the spider population in Nubbins. After all, I wouldn't want to cut off my nose for a spider face.

")