The spousal unit and I have been arguing about some, well, some poop.

Thanks to the wonder of the hive mind I have been proven right. Which, of course, should not be a surprise to anyone because if the spousal unit and I are disputing a fact of course I will be right and he will be wrong.

It's one of those immutable laws, like gravity.

It's been so ridiculously warm that we didn't get our first killing frost until the middle of this week, well over a month later than normal. This weekend I've been washing windows. I waited for a frost before I started this job because I wanted the spiders all dispatched to the Big Web in the Sky.

This has been the year of the King Kong spider. Seriously. We have had spiders this year that look like they could take down a bird. There was no way, no how I was going anywhere near the outside of our windows until Mother Nature wiped those puppies out.

All summer I've seen these white chalky dots on the floor of our back deck and on the windowsills. They're about half the size of the hole you see punched in paper for a three ring binder. Clearly they are of a poopish nature, but what was pooping where nothing had pooped before?

At first I thought it might be bats, but there's no protected place for bats to roost and besides, if there were bats there, I'd see them during daytime when they sleep. Then I thought it might be birds, but there's just no place for a bird to roost. These poops were in a long narrow line. Below windows. Windows where the King Kong spiders lived.

This weekend I proposed that we were staring at spider poops, visible because this year's arachnids were abnormally large. This theory raised spousal unit guffaws. Guffaws.

Oh, and there was snickering. Snickering.

It was untenable. So I tossed down my cleaning supplies, went inside, booted my computer and went to the gods of Google. But how do you Google a question such as this? I decided to take the bull by the horns.

"Do spiders poop?" I asked the hive mind. And proving yet again that I have the same intellectual interests as the average elementary school student, I found my answer on a web site involving some Alberta grade schoolers.

Oh yes, spiders do poop and it does look exactly like what I washed off my window sills and back deck.

Ta DAH.

I suppose I could have conveyed this information to the spousal unit in a mature manner, but there had been prior guffawing and snickering over my theory. It is entirely possible the words "so there" may have been involved when I imparted the spider poop information.

Oh yes, you can take the woman out of kindergarten, but you can't take kindergarten out of the woman.

Like I said, it has been ridiculously warm here this fall. It was so warm last night that the spousal unit was able to do his guitar practicing outside on our front step in the dark with a sweatshirt on.

I wandered out on to our front porch to rummage up a snack and happened to glance at the door that leads to the front step. Because it was open, the sounds of the spousal unit's guitar riffs drifted in through the screen door. I looked down towards the floor and there she was.

Eeny, our black, white and orange cat. The spousal unit's groupie. She was standing with her forehead pressed as hard as she could against the screen door, straining. Think elephant trying to push a tree over with its head.

The cat was so focussed on getting outside to adore the spousal unit that she didn't think to yell, which would have been an automatic door open sesame. She was so frantic to get out there that she couldn't see beyond bulldozing her way through the door.

Chortling, I went over and opened the door for her. She spilled out through it without the slightest acknowledgement and rushed over to gaze rapturously at the spousal unit. I have never seen the like of this.

From time to time a cat will deign to come to you for affection, but I've never seen such outright adoration in my life. The minute the music stops and the guitar is packed away, she reverts to being a cat, treating us as her necessary but somewhat annoying staff.

All I can say is that it's a good thing we don't live in the era of travelling troubadours. We'd never see that cat again.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 392.34 miles