Short Story - The Adventures of a Garden Spider.

Inspired by a short story I heard last week and an actual event which happened to my little boy last Summer. I may have written it in my head at 4am...it's a little random but I hope it gives you a little joy.

My home was the safest, most beautiful place I’d ever found.

I’d been there for years.

Tucked away in the corner, at the end of a long, thin garden, where the ivy and the hawthorn had grown so thick and so dense that even the smallest of birds had trouble getting inside and therefore my carefully laid plans were left uninterrupted. There was plenty of food milling around too so I never needed to leave my safe abode.

There was also a dog who lived in the garden, a nervous little thing who barked at everything, especially the birds, which kept them away from my area so I didn’t mind her noise at all. They stuck to the safety of the tall trees along the side of the garden, where they were free to nest in peace.

It was perfect.

That was, until the noises changed.

The old dog was gone.

The elderly couple no longer sat on their green, wooden bench near the back door.

A new family must have moved as there was lots of hustle and bustle. The house smelt different when the back door opened.

Everything was changing; the tall trees along the side were chopped down, making my dark corner annoyingly brighter. The birds, at a loss, attempted to nest in my home, but to no avail, thank goodness! So, they went elsewhere and everything was quieter for a little while.

One day a huge wooden shed was erected right next to my home, and it was great because made my little corner even darker and more sheltered than ever before. There was more food and more dark corners to hide in. I thought things couldn’t get any better, but I never considered they’d get much, much worse.

All of a sudden everything changed.

There was noise underneath me, the ground was being cleared. Then great big chunks of my home were being removed. As the human grabbed a handful of ivy, so intertwined it was with the hawthorn, each ivy tendril clinging on to the thorny hawthorn branches around it, it tore huge holes in my domain. Light poured in and my favourite hunting spots were vanishing quickly. I tried not to panic, but kept on the move, trying to stay out of sight.

There were more humans now, smaller ones, presumably their young. They move faster and with a lot more noise.

They stopped removing my precious home, leaving what was left of the overgrowth to create some kind of roof over what they called their new den.

Except it wasn’t their den. It was my home.

I kept moving, trying to find a quiet spot out of sight. But they were everywhere.

Without any warning, a small boy brushed past me, knocking me off the branch. I fell into a strange, dark place. It was warm and so unlike home, but I couldn’t work out where on earth I was.

Hours past.

I felt the sun go down.

The place I was in kept moving, like the walls couldn’t keep still. I had to roll up as small as I could to avoid losing a leg. I had to try to predict where the next gap would be as another set of walls closed in on me. And the heat, I’d never known anything like it. Not even the brightest sunshine of the hottest British Summer day was ever this hot.

“I’ve got an itch” I heard someone say.

Suddenly, everywhere was flooded with light, I couldn’t see for a moment but I could hear the screams.

I felt myself drop to the floor, the moving walls gone; I was surrounded by nothing but air. I stretched out my tired legs just in time to see a large glass land perfectly over the top of me. Pulling my legs in and adjusting them as a piece of paper slid between the glass and the floor, trapping me inside.

The humans were still very noisy, and now they were peering at me in shock through the glass.

“You had that in your pants all afternoon?” yelled a woman.

“It’s huge! How did you not notice that?”

I felt movement, heard a window open, then suddenly the paper was gone and I was falling through the open air.

It was a long way down, but I landed with a soft thud on the grass below and welcomed the darkness of the night, the fresh air and the freedom to finally go and find myself a new home.

Maybe one of these sheds will do…