I got felt up by a daddy longlegs this morning.
I was standing in a little glade that's surrounded by pine trees. It's one of my favorite places to stop and just be when I'm out walking. The scent of the trees and the feel of all the pine needles underfoot is so soothing. I was lost in my bliss when I felt something tickling my ankle. I looked down expecting to see a tick, but it was a daddy longlegs parked on the tongue of my shoe, reaching up to feel my bare skin with his one of his fragile limbs.
He'd tap in one spot, then shift a little and tap in another, always touching my flesh, never the top of my sock. He was so absorbed in trying to figure me out that I didn't have the heart to brush him off. I just stood there and allowed myself to be examined. He kept at it for a minute or two, then seemed to come to a conclusion and abruptly departed.
I wonder what I was to him: Predator? Potential meal? Unusual plant? Impossible to know. I can't even say what he was to me.
Photo by Danny Steaven from Wikimedia Commons.
4 comments:
Reminds me of my first tentative gestures when I first met my wife, and oh what I found! Glad she didn't brush me away.
Clearly she was a better find than me--I was rejected!
I'm sure that's a good omen of some sort.
I wonder what he ran home and told his friends. "Honest to God, I was ON HER LEG!" and the other daddy longlegs would be like "Oh, man, will you stop lyin'..."
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