The Battle of Top Hat Wood

.”Homeward bound commuters occupy every seat on the BART train. As the train continues underground to the next station, our gentleman takes a wide stance and grips hard onto the steel seat-back handle and steadies himself. A few commuters exit the train at the Fruitvale Station, but the compartment still remains packed. As the train continues towards its next station, streams of sunlight flood the sardine-packed passenger car. Stressing under the bizarre and frightful sensations of dark and light in the hot and stuffy train, Jerry plays dead, curling into a tight ball. He rolls around and off the gentleman’s hat brim and falls deeply, but safely, into the beard of Dr. Michael Greenstone—the famous forensic pathologist, who sits quietly on the train, reading his Bay Guardian. Greenstone is oblivious to the presence of the spider in his beard. “Bayfair, last stop to transfer to a Fremont bound train,” announces the trainman, “Dublin/Pleasanton bound train. Dublin/Pleasanton bound train.” The train slowly moves out of the station and picks up speed rounding the curve into Castro Valley. Dr. Greenstone and Jerry stand and wait by the exit for the train to stop. Getting off at the Castro Valley BART Station, Greenstone and Jerry take the escalator to the ground floor. Finding his car in the BART parking lot, Greenstone drives through town, heading home along Crow Canyon Road. Soon Greenstone, with Jerry securely snuggling in his beard, pulls into the Greenstone’s driveway. Stepping out of the car, Greenstone stops and takes in the beauty of the canyon. He loudly sneezes three times in rapid succession in reaction to the day’s high pollen count, hurling Jerry into the top tuft of the first of several bonsai olive trees lining the side of the driveway. Greenstone enters his house, leaving Jerry outside. “Are you sure this is where I am destined to be?” Jerry thinks. “Yes,” answers Alma, who knows what the future will bring. As the sun gradually disappears behind Greenridge, Jerry finds himself in a warm pocket of air in the dusky spring stillness. With ears attentively upright, a doe and two fawns cautiously cross Greenstone’s lawn, as they make their usual twilight rounds. Field crickets run about in the twilight, devouring seedlings of wild plants and the abundant wild sprouts growing through the pea gravel border surrounding Greenstone’s well-manicured front lawn. Along the stepping-stones leading to the back yard, a dark reddish-brown field cricket nibbles on young grasses under a bank of variegated juniper bushes. Surprised to death by a large trapdoor spider, which blazes from her silk-lined burrow, the cricket becomes an instant happy meal. With the unfortunate field cricket well under her control, the trapdoor spider disappears back down her burrow, where she feeds on the stunned critter. Later, the spider lifts the thick silk-hinged trapdoor cover of her burrow, slipping her front legs outside to trip-up her next meal. As twilight darkens into night, nocturnal ground spiders with keen eyesight take over the territory, while Jerry’s relatives, with poor eyesight, move from their retreats to the centers of their orb webs ready to pounce on snared flying insects. Suddenly Dr. Greenstone emerges out of the front door of his house with flashlight in hand to search for the morning newspaper, which was delivered after he had left early for work. As the flashlight beam dances along the ground, scores of tiny flashes of light are reflected from the retinas of small wolf spiders wandering the grounds in search of food. The tiny reflecting lights go unnoticed by Greenstone, who intensely pursues the morning newspaper. Reaching, then groping around the tire under his wife’s car, he clutches the paper and brings it into the house. “Found the paper in the same place under your car, Honey. How does the newspaper guy hit the same spot every day?” Honey answers, “That’s nice, dear.” Jerry, who has climbed out of the olive tree and up a Cyprus tree growing under the garage roof in front of the house, watches Greenstone from the rain gutter. He spins an irregularly shaped silk hollow structure and settles in for the night, comforted by the thought that he is where he’s supposed to be. Jerry and his keen eyesight are most active during the day. He will not be joining the rest of his cousins, creeping on the ground in their nocturnal search for food. The rising morning sun signals it’s time for the web spiders and burrowing spiders to return to their safe haunts. In their continuous search for food and females, wandering male wolf spiders are clearly visible running about, as they are active during the day as well as during the night. On the side of the garage, Jerry catches a glimpse of a large garden spider suspended in the center of her web that she built across the walkway to the Greenstone house during the night. Jerry doesn’t know what to make of the plump morsel suspended over the walkway. With his jerky movements, he turns one way then another, contemplating his next meal. Jerry is the type of spider that is quick to spring and pounce on its prey, sometimes snatching a bug in mid-flight. Jerry figures the unsuspecting garden spider is well in his reach. He fixes his dragline to the gutter and jumps though the air at the plump spider. At that precise moment, Greenstone, who is preoccupied with the details of the late morning flight he has to catch at the Oakland International Airport, runs squarely into the large garden spider web across the sidewalk, which engulfs his head. As Jerry misses his breakfast, he thinks, “Oh no! Nice miss. Thanks a lot Greenstone! Who knows when I’m going to get another chance to dig into a big juicy meal like that?” “Gosh darn it! I hate that when it happens,” exclaims Dr. Greenstone, as he pulls the remains of the orb weaver’s web from his face and glasses, “What a way to start a day. Snared in a spider web! I don’t have time for this nonsense.” Jerry, who perfectly understands English, is amazed to have heard and understood this human’s words so clearly. As Greenstone continues to disentangle himself from the last bits of the web clinging to his ears and eyebrows, Jerry decides to try to influence Dr. Greenstone’s thoughts. “Remember, my friend,” Jerry says whimsically, “‘If you wish to live and thrive, let the spider run alive. Kill a spider and bad luck yours will be, until of flies you’ve swatted fifty-three,’” Jerry says, pulling a couple of old English nursery rhymes out of his gene pool. Dr. Greenstone stops in mid-stride and says, “I hope that spider is alright?” He begins looking around the edges of the walkway and around the flowers growing out of the red tanbark along the pathway to see if the web spider landed safely. No trace of the orb weaver is found. Dr. Greenstone presumes the spider safely landed and is motionless or has scampered under a plant leaf or flower pedal. Greenstone is relieved and considers himself the benefactor of good luck, as it was only the spider’s web that was destroyed and not the spider. Snuggled deep inside Dr. Greenstone’s beard, Jerry observes the impact of the suggestion he placed in Dr. Greenstone’s mind. “Wow!” he thinks, “I do have influence over this guy! He’s checking whether or not the orb weaver was hurt! I own this guy.” “Be humble, Jerry, your journey is long and you have only taken your first steps.” “Is that you, Alma?” “Yes, you are on a mission beyond your imagination. Stay alert and focused and, above all, protect Dr. Greenstone. He will be and important part of your life, as you will be in his life.”