We once had a golden orb spider as a pet. She made her home high in the corner by the back door and my daughters, then in elementary school, watched her daily, secretly hoping they had their own Charlotte who would spin adjectives such as “radiant” and “humble” into her web. We all cried the day the pest control man killed our friend, sweeping her away with a long-handled broom, oblivious to the joy and wonder she brought our family.

The story has stayed with us, and so some ten years later, I never imagined we would become home wreckers of not just one, but at least a dozen golden orb spiders living in the woods of Washington County, Alabama. The land is ours, a Treasure Forest my husband Lynn manages on his days off and a place where he and his father can enjoy time together. Sitting high on a tractor, my 86-year-old father-in-law grooms wide paths among the trees, opening fire lines and leading us to green fields where gopher tortoises dig their burrows and blue birds nest in boxes atop metal poles. The paths are also the perfect habitat for the golden orb spider. Clinging to longleaf pines and yaupon holly on either side of the trail, the spiders stretch their yellow-hued webs, head-high across the grassy track.

Such were the webs when we found ourselves riding through the woods on a beautiful autumn day in October. Our daughters Annie and Genna had arrived from The University of Alabama for fall break and we were all craving a little family time off the grid. “Who wants to go for a ride?” Lynn asked, backing out the UTV, brushing the dirt out of its utility bin, and indicating for us to hop in. I took the front seat with the girls choosing to hang on in back. We weren’t far down the path when the shrieking began. The spider webs, at first invisible, were perfect targets for the roof of the UTV where the poor spiders found themselves unexpectedly homeless and face to face with our daughters. Both girls are veteran campers, Outward Bound graduates, and former camp counselors, and I was surprised to see the level of fright on Genna’s face.  Surely these were not her first spider encounters.

Suddenly, these tiny creatures, whose size equaled less than one percent of an adult’s body surface area, thrust us into familiar family dynamics. As if they were little girls again, Annie, fully aware Genna was terrified of getting the spider tangled in her long, curly hair, taunted Genna with a two-inch insect on the end of a stick. I tried the cliché “you’re bigger than it is, the spider won’t hurt you,” and Lynn calmly relocated each spider to the side of the path.

The situation called for a healthy dose of compassion in more ways than one. Where others, like our old pest control man, might have killed the spiders, we wished for them only a safer place to live. Annie saw the terror in Genna’s face and let up on the teasing, showing a little compassion toward her sibling.  I stopped trying to talk Genna out of her fear (in truth, I shrieked at the thought the spider landing in my hair) and she accepted her panic with grace, exclaiming at the end of the ride, “That was both terrifying and fun.”