A Christian spider?

September 21, 2015 • 1:30 pm

Reader Chris sent me a photo of an oddly marked spider and a note:

A few months ago, one Sunday morning, someone knocked on my front door unexpectedly.
(Or did they unexpectedly knock on my front-door? I fear a reprimand from Steven Pinker now.)
I opened the door to be greeted by one of my neighbours, a middle-aged woman I’d never spoken to before, just the occasional friendly smile and hello.
She grinned at me: “I’d like to invite you to a memorial.”
“Sorry?”
“I’d like to invite you to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus”.
Ahh. It was Easter – damn, I need to get chocolate eggs for the kids.
“I’m sorry, really not interested”.
As I closed the door, I swear she scowled at me. Really? You knock on my door uninvited, and it’s me that’s in the wrong?

Yesterday, as I left the house, I nearly walked into a big spider’s web right across my front door.
I took a photo of the offending beast – having zoomed in to inspect further,
I’m pretty sure that neighbour had something to do with this, just look at the cross on its abdomen!
(I presume it’s an abdomen – I wrote ‘back’ initially. Or is it a ‘thorax’?)

Yep, it’s an abdomen, though I can’t identify the punitive beast. But I’m sure some reader can. Chris apparently didn’t realize the money he could make by exhibiting the spider in its web.
xtian spider

57 thoughts on “A Christian spider?”

    1. I didn’t know the Latin name, but that seems to be the one. They’re very common in Europe, and in some countries they’re called “cross spiders” or something similar, because of the markings.

      5. Indeed, “Kreuzspinne” in German, too (“Cross-Spider”), genus araneus. They are very common. Fortunately they prefer outdoors. The aforementioned araneus diadematus is the most common species of the genus in central Europe, according to the German Wikipedia. You can find them easily under street lights and on bridges and masts.

          1. Mast would be a perfectly acceptable term. Large radio antennae and the like are commonly referred to in English as masts.

    2. They appear in the late summer and early autumn. I remember putting one down my twin sister’s back one afternoon. It disappeared, and then came out, to her and everybody’s consternation (except mine), at tea-time.

    3. And here I would just say, “an outside spider; maybe an orb weaver of some kind”. My spider classifications are: quick outside spider, outside orb weaver spider, orb weaver spiders with really long legs, skinny indoor spiders, hopping spiders, wolf spiders, dock spiders.

  3. Reminds me of an old joke:

    A farmer named Muldoon lived alone in the countryside with a wee dog that he loved and doted on. After many long years of faithful companionship, the dog finally died, so Muldoon went to the parish priest:

    “Father, my dear old dog is dead. Could you be saying a Mass for him?”

    Father Patrick replied, “I am so very sorry to hear about your dog’s death. But, unfortunately, I can’t say Mass for the poor creature…”

    Muldoon said, “I understand, Father, I do. I guess I’ll go to this new denomination down the road; no tellin’ what they believe… Do you think $500 is enough to donate for the service?”

    Father Patrick: “Why didn’t you tell me your wee dog was Catholic?!”

  4. And I don’t think Chris need fear an avenging Steven Pinker — as far as I know, he is definitely a descriptive linguist rather than a prescriptive one, and would jump in with his sword and shield on Chris’s side in this battle.

          1. Homophone … homophobe, iceberg … Feinberg, Chinese … Japanese, the Titanic … Pearl Harbor — like that, you mean?

      1. Oh dear, that’ll learn me/teach I to think twice before throwing in a ‘smart arse’ tangential reference to the cunning-linguist – such an obvious and yet clever joke Ken makes above, I chortled.
        But surely first prize goes to Eric for his proposal to write a book about these cross-spiders with the title: ‘Why Are You Arachnids So Angry?’ Brilliant!
        (Oh btw, I notice Jerry corrected a couple of other ‘typos’ in the words I sent him – that’s saved you all the chore of pointing them out, phew).

  6. Thanks everyone. I’ve googled images for Araneus diadematus and we have a match.
    Oh, I forgot to mention to Jerry, I live in the UK near Brighton on the south coast of England.
    I’ll pop round to my neighbour’s and let her know too, pretty sure she’ll be keen to be introduced to Jerry’s WEIT website … hmmm, maybe not.

    2. I’ve heard an appropriate Christian greeting is to smear their doorposts with Surströmming (a topic of conversation here a few short days ago). The fish is, of course, a symbol of Christ’s fertility, sexual awareness, and his well-known love for children. The smearing on the doorposts evokes His final Passover meal, where the Angel of Death was warded-off by the ungodly stench. For the spell to be truly effective, the application should take place during “Trinity” hour: from 3 to 4 in the morning, before the cock crows.

  8. I had a similar experience many years ago. I walked out of my parents house early one morning, still dark, right into a web that covered what seemed to be my entire body. I was instantly hopelessly entangled. Also instantly, I began hopping around and frantically wiping myself all over. It didn’t seem to do much good.

    I eventually calmed enough to understand what had happened and was able to methodically make some progress. As the sun came up and lit the scene I could see the remains of the anchor lines of the web which spanned a total horizontal distance of nearly 3 meters and 2 meters vertically. It was built overnight. At that point I decided to double check that the spider that had made that web wasn’t on my body. Then I saw the spider on an adjacent wall, up just under the soffit, near one of the anchor lines. It was a Golden Silk Orb Weaver (Nephila clavipes), often erroneously called a Banana Spider around these parts, with a leg span at least as large as the palm of my hand. They are big spiders, at least the females, but I have never seen one that large since.

      1. Oh yes, it certainly impressed me! 🙂

        But, to clarify, the web dimensions I gave where the total span including anchor lines and what-not. Since I destroyed it before I saw it I can only guesstimate by the overall size, and my size, that the central orb part of the web was only about 1 to 1.5 meters in diameter.

          1. That depends on average snow depth.

            Small depth = a double door suffice for isolation = outer door swings out.

            Large depth = outer door swings in = you have a (coldish) hallway. But you can get out! =D

        2. It’ll likely re-build and if you post a not on your door to remind yourself, you can measure it tomorrow.

    2. When I was a wee lassie I went on a geology field trip into the Red Centre (of Australia) where we stomped for many miles through the spinifex. Also growing were short straight trees of some sort, which when they were located about 5 feet apart would often harbour a huge spider on an enormous web. It didn’t take us long to figure this out, but no matter how hard we looked for them we still often walked into the damn things. I reminded myself that spiders are not suicidal and would certainly do their best to avoid me, but it’s still very clear in my memory although it was over 30 years ago now.

      1. Considering how venomous just about anything you come across in Australia is, that sounds terrifying!

        Though Golden Silk Orb Weavers are pretty spectacular their bite is not dangerous to humans, supposedly no more than a minor irritant. And it is said you have to pinch one to get it to bite you. Given their size and appearance that doesn’t seem possible, but that’s what the experts say. They look like they could tear off chunks of flesh.

        1. It was pretty alarming, but we walked into a hell of a lot of webs and no one ever got bitten. It was amazing how hard it was to see an enormous spider sitting in the middle of a very exposed web.

  13. A few decade ago someone (?Gould ?Sagan) played with the idea that the cross pattern might be pretty heavily selected for during the past couple thousand years in Christian Europe, And mused that someone should look to see how common or pronounced the cross pattern is in, say, Anatolian spiders..

    I can’t find a reference to this, though I find that Sagan referenced [in Cosmos] the Japanese samurai crab as a possible case of selection involving cultural symbols

  14. I recall reading an apocryphal story, many years ago, about Jesus as a boy and a spider saving him. In short: As a boy, JC one day was playing outside when accosted and chased by a group of older kids with bad intent. Running away JC then hid himself in a tight opening between rocks. While hidden a spider spun her web across the entrance of the hiding place. As the youngsters came across JC’s hiding place they concluded he could not be in there since he would have broken the perfect spider web covering the opening, and hence they continued their search elsewhere, leaving li’l JC in peace. As a sign of gratitude to the spider JC then placed the mark of the cross with his finger on the abdomen of the spider – to be forever hailed as the saviour of the Boy Saviour.

    These spider species with the cross marking are widely seen as a sign of good luck if they make an appearance in a garden.

    1. Just so you aren’t a humming bird or wasp or fly you are just dandy. Same with the Preying Mantis. Good against the little ones, bad if you were that size. Bad for them if a bird gets’em! Ah the layers of life.

  15. A Google search on “Christian spider” produces this page here and nine hits on the
    “Andrew Christian Spider Thong”.

    Andrew Christian is a seller of men’s underwear, swimwear, and sportswear. The spider thong is so named due to being an underwear largely composed of webbing.

    I conclude there are no Christian spiders.

    static1.squarespace.com/static/517992bce4b072eb97f28184/55ebaed7e4b08279fc0b2ad2/546ceb66e4b0304f0a9fffda/1416424294768/9680_4633_combo.jpg?format=300w

    1. I pictured a life-like tarantula or wolf spider their with its big mouth parts right on the bulge…

  16. Maybe your neighbour IS a spider! She just took human form to try to convert you. Think, have you ever seen the spider & your neighbour in the same place at the same time?!

  17. That spider is called “araña de la cruz” (cross spider) and “araña de jardín europea” (european garden spider) in Spain.

    It is quite common to find them outdoors.

  18. Speaking of spiders, I’ve wondered for a while …

    I know there’s sort of an upper limit to the size of creatures with open circulatory systems – how big a spider *could* one have?

  19. Just pareidolia kicking in. Pay no mind to it.
    The price we pay for pattern recognition ability.

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