The Great Spittlebug Infestation of Oh-Eight was both a blessing and a curse for the spider colony at Silky Meadows. The same all-you-can-eat froghopper sandwiches that had fattened their little bellies had also emaciated their little hearts and souls. There was no more drive in their spirit, no more killer instinct, and all the hustlers that had once defined this spiderhood with their will to survive had been reduced (or rather, enlarged) to a community of overweight slobs.
“We lost the hunger, bro,” admitted Corey Weaver, one of the local spiders we found lying around. “Literally. And spiders can go for like a year on a full stomach so you know we ain’t doing shit out here.”
Before the overabundance, families struggled to stay above water (especially during the rainy season), and Corey was no exception. He worked three webs and even did network marketing on the side but those days, along with his career, were long gone. “I just ain’t got the eye of the tiger spider no more,” he laughed. “But these immigrants sure do.”
In the prior weeks, an influx of spiders had migrated to Silky Meadows to make better lives for themselves, only to find that they had missed the boom entirely. Luckily for them, many of the spiders in the area had become so obese and indolent that they stopped weaving their own webs and started hiring web developers. Some went to Websters and hired professional webmasters but most, like Corey, hired uncertified day weavers on the cheap, guys like Felix Arañas, one of the immigrants who was late to the party and had to scramble for work.
“My cousin Pepino convinced me to come to this hoyo de miedra,” complained Felix, “He told me bug tacos would be falling out of the sky.” Felix looked up at the clear blue sky with his big black eyes. “¡Mis huevos!”
It hadn’t been easy for Felix. After missing out on the spittlebug lottery, he quickly realized that his skill set was not suited to the trends of the area. “I don’t really use webs. I’m a walking spider,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I’ll creep up on your ass but clients don’t like that shit. They want spinners.” The first web he spun (as he put it) was a desmadre.
“It had a big hole in the middle and a moth flew right through it. I closed the hole but I got shitty silk, so the same pinche moth came back and flew right through the damn thing like it wasn’t even there.”
Felix was fired from that project but he met another immigrant named Ara who did nice work and showed him how to improve his craft. They worked well together until one night when Ara came home to find the words IRAQNID GO HOME woven into the side of his house. The next day he packed up his family and crawled out of town.
“Stupid racists,” said Ara as he left the colony. “I am from Armenia, not Iraq, but who cares. When I see racism with my own eight eyes, I don’t stick around to split hairs.”
Felix was so overwhelmed with projects as a result of Ara’s departure that he couldn’t keep up with demand. “I only have eight legs!” he yelled at one client before he dropped dead of a massive heart attack, completely unaware that he was about to become a father of forty.
“It was a one night stand,” confessed Irmalinda, who had spiderlings crawling all over her like red ants when we first spoke to her. “I carried that fool’s egg sac for two weeks and now I’m a single mother. I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna feed all these little bastards.”
It was about a month after that when we heard the news about Corey, who got jumped by a bunch of jumping spiders and died from his injuries. In his will, he left all of his belongings, including a stockpile of spittlebugs, to Felix’s offspring. The next time we spoke to Irmalinda, she was in much higher spirits.
“Fuck yeah! That’s what’s up, puto!” she boasted in our phone interview. “I hired a team of nannies and now I can afford to put braces on my childrens’ fangs.” We could hear the kids screaming and playing video games in the background. “I’m also putting away for their futures. I don’t want my kids working the corner like I did when I was their age, even though corners are like the best places for a spider.”
Two days later, Silky Meadows was swept away by a thunderstorm that flooded the area with eight inches of rain. When the spittlebugs returned the following spring, they rejoiced in the aftermath of Arachnogeddon and proceeded to destroy all of the plant life within a ten mile radius.