We have an entente with the cellar spiders in our house. We leave them to their own devices in the crevices and ceiling areas we don’t need, and they return the favour by policing all the other invertebrates. Pholcids eat flies and other spiders. They’ll eat each other if pushed.
We’ve tried over time to be much more relaxed about the presence of spiders in the house. I’m very rarely called upon now to relocate a giant house spider, and when I do, it is gently moved to the garage with me apologising profusely to it. Once in a while, one scuttles across the living room floor and I greet it like a friend, even after some evolutionary instinct in me recoils a little. It might be the same thing that makes a cat jump when it sees a cucumber.
Earlier this year, I took a brief course in regenerative land-based studies at the Apricot Centre in Dartington. One area of regenerative land management we covered was permaculture, and I chatted briefly one day with Charlie, one of the brilliant tutors there, about permaculture zones and spiders.
Permaculture (permanent culture) is an approach to land management and design that looks to mimic what works in flourishing natural ecosystems. Some logical and common sense principles are wrapped up with an ethical framework that prioritises care for ecosystems, prioritising people’s needs, reducing consumption and redistributing surpluses. One of the most useful tools that comes with permaculture is the use of zones, areas in a landholding delineated by the needs of nature and the frequency of human need.
Zone 0 is the home (zone 00, as an extension of this, is your own body and mind). Radiating out from zone 0, zones are organised by how often you need to use them – zone 1 is for those things tended or needed often, such as herb gardens, greenhouses and salad crops. Zone 2 might be for polytunnels or poultry. Zones reach out until zone 5, a wild zone at the edge, is left to nature, only entered occasionally to forage from what is plentiful.
Permaculture design thinking is logical and intuitive, and has crept into my daily thinking about how to design our garden, as well as how to plan out land use for others. It balances biophilia with ergonomics, maximising the best use of ecosystem services and stacking complementary activities.
So, back to spiders.
I got talking with Charlie about spiders, I forget exactly what started it. He explained to me that he thought of his own home as having permaculture zones, and the spiders inhabited the zone 5 within the house – all the places that he didn’t need up in the ceiling and down in crevices. It’s where the spiders webs appear. It’s where the spiders use. So it was a completely logical choice not to interfere with them, but to leave them to do their thing, to catch other insects. To do a job for us, in return for shelter.
Whenever I have spent time in Asia, I’ve always felt huge affection for the house geckos that lurk near the lights, eating mosquitoes and chirping occasionally, benign presences needing nothing other than acceptance. After I spoke with Charlie, I suddenly started to see our house spiders as being just like the geckos.
So we have a peaceful relationship with the spiders, who in my mind I see as some kind of benevolent protection bracket. Fungus gnats or fruit flies that occasionally buzz around the house seem to be too small for the pholcids’ straggly webs; I jokingly suggest that I mean to have a word with the spiders’ union rep about sorting them out. Once in a while, the desiccated carcass of a fly drifts down like a black snowflake from the ceiling, or a windowsill is swept for various invertebrate body parts. The spider in our cabin is called Shelob, and all guests will be informed that she was there first. We just reserve the right to clear a path when needed, like the other day when a spider in the kitchen span a web from the sideboard to a chair. We’re not quite Miss Havisham yet.