Midnight Mutterings | Night Shift

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

I just arrived in Bellingham, along with my constant unseen passenger. She’s been coming along on all my trips, uninvited, for several years now. I say ‘she’ even though I’ve never seen her and wouldn’t know her gender even if I had. She doesn’t have a name yet, but if I had named her, she might be Charlotte. That’s what I’ll call her here (with gratitude to E. B. White).

The evidence of Charlotte’s existence is that every morning, the mirror of the driver’s side window on my old, beat up, second hand Prius is newly decorated with original–I assume–art work. Charlotte is the consummate web designer. If I haven’t driven the day before, then the web is double, or triple of that of a single night’s effort. And then the mirror, of course, reflects the webs in such a way that defies my mathematical abilities. The webs are stunningly beautiful, especially when decorated with tiny drops of dew, and I always cringe when my destroying hand reaches out to clear the mirror.

If I am only driving around the island, I let nature take it course, and I usually don’t drive fast enough to completely destroy and remove the webs. If I am off island and on I-5, then it’s another story. I have sometimes been distracted by a tangle of torn web stringing past my window, so I do the damage myself before I leave home.

Charlotte’s life is mysterious to me. Her daytime home is presumably behind the mirror in that space the mirror rotates a bit when I adjust it to my preference. Which I don’t do often as I am the only one willing to drive such an unsightly vehicle. Did I mention the green, living roof, on the originally silver Prius that is regularly parked under an Alder tree, and only feels the effects of a car wash once a year or so? Oddly, Charlotte, if not her webs, seems to survive a car wash just fine.

Sometimes I wonder what it looks like behind the mirror. Is it full of web or does Charlotte reserve her efforts for the face of the mirror and the webby attachments to the car door?

And I say Charlotte, but given the number of years the web rebuilding has been going on, the family business must be carried on by her progeny, Charlottes, Jr., Do several Charlottes live behind the mirror or is she a single widow who lives on her own. And why does no one live behind the mirror on the passenger side of the car? Is spider real estate preference based on location, location, location as much as it is in the human world?

So many questions and no answers unless you choose to provide some, or if I dare to wander down the Google rabbit hole after spiders. (Not yet, anyway.)

One thing I appreciate about my Charlotte (or Charlottes) is that so far she hasn’t written anything in her web. I think I might be beyond insulted if one morning I had to face “Some Pig,” as I check behind me before I back out into the road. And who knows what Charlotte’s political leanings are if she chose to write about that? I definitely prefer not knowing. I am pretty sure the late, great, Sybil-the-Cat was Republican, as most felines are according to political pollsters I trust. Not that she wrote anything either, though she did leave some signs of her personal preferences in streaks of blood.

A few more interesting (to me) factoids: Roger Angell, the celebrated baseball journalist is the stepson of E.B. White, who met Angell’s mother when they both worked for The New Yorker. As did Roger Angell, who will be 101 years old next September if, as the Irish say, he is spared. In 2015 Angell published his most recent book, essays gathered in This Old Man: All in Pieces. You can, of course, find that book, as well as the books of E.B. White, at our wonderful local library.