Daddy Long Leg Rendezvous

It was late July when all of this mess started. I came home one day and there was a black pulsating mess of legs all over my doorway. For some reason they really liked to congregate directly above the door or window on the front of the house. Nowhere else. Just the only entry point to the structure i lived in. And they were getting busy, all of the time. I’d had a hard day’s work. I was just trying to get in the house. I’d swat these suckers across the porch boards. You know where they went? Right back up the wall and into the pulsating mass of legs above my doorway. Sigh. The photos pictured above were from the beginning of the long-leg mating season. When the door was covered in a thick black cloud i wasn’t taking pictures anymore. I was busy playing a strategy game to get in the house. I had to get some object that wasn’t already in the house (usually from the shed), scoop and fling the mass as far as i could, and run in the house before they all made their way back. They were surprisingly fast for how goofy they appeared. The problem arose when the dogs needed to go out potty. The dogs would line up, i’d fling open the door, the dogs would take off running like horses out of a chute and i’d stand there playing goalie with a broom against the onslaught of daddy long legs pouring into the house from the top of the door frame. I would find them dead everywhere. In the dish water, in the bath tub, on the stove. They weren’t real resilient little survivalists. They would come in the house, die, and then when you stuck your hand in the dish water you could feel legs. Eventually my youngest dog Cashew picked up on the fact that i did not like these critters in the house and she began eating them. My sweet little vacuum. I am hoping they pick a different spot for the swingers party next year.