Giant spiders: a dream fragment

A woman notices an enormous spider in the house. It is easily as large as her hand, though it has a body type unusual for such a large spider: huge abdomen, small cephalothorax, and long, delicate legs. Its racquetball-sized abdomen is a ghostly grey, the color of certain dusty-hued pearls. Its legs and cephalothorax are dark, either black or brown.

The woman’s children, who have been taught from infancy to admire and respect spiders, are careful of the creature and not in any way afraid of it. There are other people in the house, however, and she is concerned for the spider’s safety. She decides to find it and remove it to the relative security of outdoors.

She searches carefully through the house, finally spies the spider slipping through a door that has been left ajar. She follows and finds a densely foliated shrub with large leaves. On further investigation, she is amazed to discover that the shrub houses a whole colony of enormous spiders of a different type from the one that led her there.

These spiders are built like tarantulas, with short, thick legs and abdomens in proportion to the rest of their bodies. Unlike tarantulas, however, they are not covered with fine hairs but are smooth with small raised bumps like the exterior of a starfish or a cucumber. Each spider is a single, vivid shade of green, orange, pink, yellow, or red. They remind the woman of huge tropical flowers as they crawl about the shrub. Filled with wonder and delight, she calls her children to come see what she has found.