The Incarcerated Spider

Spider with no shackles, spider with no chains you witness the guilty and guiltless in their coming and goings, all the inmates called by their last names.  It is strange to me how a spider can make its way into a prison, past steel doors and all measures of security and that this spider can also travel from my visiting booth to yours – like a ninja it makes its way through the ventilation systems and covers every square inch of the ‘max security’ facility; nature makes this place look like a joke.  The spider broke the moment of confinement for me, the spider made me realize that the prison is a façade, , it is a power structure where which all the inmates play in the game.  I’ve always thought of the prison as a deviant and demented zoo, holding all the most dangerous animals together in one place.  The spider is a perfect symbol, a symbol that has recently dawned on me when a spider decided to show itself in the jail.  The spider is actually very similar to all of those behind bars because society tends to act the same way towards a spider as they do those that are labeled as ‘criminal’.  You see a spider and your mind says things like ugly, scary, gross, awful, going to hurt me, going to get me in my sleep, must be killed, must die, must destroy it, must capture it, and most of all, must not let it get away!  You hear of, think of, or see a ‘criminal’ (a person in jail) and think the very same things.  How can a spider become beautiful if we don’t change our perception of it?  How can a spider show us the wonderful things that it was created to do if we never give it a chance to make it out of our death penalty?  No one can speak for the spider, testify and object, be the defense - no one can say ‘this spider is innocent’.  Does this mean that an inmate has more of a chance at redeeming his name than a tiny creature of eight legs?  We need to listen to nature, to the animals and the insects.  They will tell us something guaranteed as long as we are willing to learn.  I didn’t kill that spider I saw that day in the prison, I left him alone and let him be.  In fact I felt sorry for him in that very moment and finally understood how like many other creatures and animals, even our own species, are judged by mere appearance, species, race, age, class, gender – and are often times never given a chance to be liberated or to be seen as something more than their outer shell.  Shame on the people that are so quick to condemn the spider that has not even had a chance at trial; shame the person that calls all spiders evil, poisonous, dangerous, and deserving of death – take a minute to recognize your ignorance and ask a spider what he has seen.  This spider, with eight eyes, living amongst the condemned, the trapped, the incarcerated, sees more than what many people will ever see - it sees those in captivity.  And when the spider crosses the threshold on any given sunny day, the spider scampers out faithfully and courageously off to send a message of S.O.S and help! – off to tell the rest of nature stories about what the human does to it’s own species.  And along this spiders journey outside of the prison walls, the prison gates, I can’t help but wonder if he stops and thinks ‘But, wait, I too am among those that are seen as criminals – maybe I should stay.’