Wildlife

옛날 옛적에, once upon a time, the scariest thing on the Korean Peninsula was the tiger. These huge beasts roamed freely through the mountains, dark forests, and unprotected villages, and into the capital city itself. They prowled the streets and sewers of ancient Seoul, and even the king had to lock up tight against the tigers that haunted his palace grounds after dark. A regiment of hunters with matchlock guns ostensibly protected the city, but the danger was always there - so much so that in Korean folklore it is a tiger that comes knocking at the door dressed in grandmother’s clothing.

There are no tigers in Korea now. They were hunted away by the early 1940s, along with the equally fearsome Korean leopard. The peninsula is pretty safe these days; just some wild boar, a couple kinds of venomous snake, a surfeit of lunatic drivers, and that crazy guy up North. Only one animal comes close to the blood-chilling status of the Joseon-Era tiger. I speak, of course, of the spider.

I might be speaking for myself. Maybe you’re fine with spiders. I usually am too, but Korean spiders – and Jeju spiders in particular – freak the bejeebus out of me. Not because they’re dangerous: out of the island’s 347 species of spider only one is moderately poisonous. It’s that, like the tigers of old, they own this place.

I’m reminded of this every summer when the ornamental cherry trees that line the roads become chain link fences of spider webbing, but this year it’s gotten personal. That’s because we’ve moved deeper into their territory. There’s only so far away from it all you can get on a touristy island like Jeju, but our new neighborhood is distinctly rural. It’s all fields and flowers, with a lotus pond, a wooded oreum, and a lot more wildlife than our last place in Jeju City. Starting with our new dog, Charlie.

Charlie is a scruffy little mutt-pup with the soul of a poet. She spends her time tip-tapping through the greenery, sniffing delicately at flowers, and chasing the tiny, blue butterflies that flutter above the grass. If she was human there would definitely be diaphanous gowns and moonlight dancing. She’s so blissfully in the clouds that she’s yet to notice her favorite walking routes are absolutely crawling with spiders.

Charlie and I have two kinds of spider encounters, and the better is with the spiders themselves. The main species around here is straight out of Studio Ghibli: coal black with bulbous bodies and whirring, spindly legs. Our evening walk often coincides with spider rush hour when these not-so-little guys come stampeding up the road, eager to get home to the family. They are not intimidated by our size, and pass directly beneath our feet with a nod and occasional comment on the weather. Sure, it sounds cute, but don’t underestimate terror in numbers. Even snuggly bunnies could turn horrific if enough of them came bouncing merrily toward you at once.

Yet the other kind of spider encounter is far more terrifying because there are no spiders at all. At least, none that I can see.

As with tigers, spiders do their best work at night, and every morning we wake up to a world coated in spider silk. There aren’t many traditional webs, just long, single threads stretching across every open space. I can’t imagine they’re good for catching food (I never see insects tangled in them), but they are great at snagging hair, clinging creepily to bare skin, and wrapping around one’s face. From ankle-high tripwires to throat-twanging clotheslines, every path is booby-trapped. It’s a real bummer for the first person walking through in the morning. I should know. I do it every single weekday.

Nature calls and our poetical dog rises with the sun in answer. So we are the first to run the spider gauntlet. The threads are invisible except in direct sunlight. Occasionally I catch a glimpse just before impact and everything goes slow motion as my upper body peels backward (“Nooooooo…”) in an attempt to Matrix myself out of harms’ way. More often we barrel blindly through, me squealing and Charlie oblivious as she looks for a place to tinkle. Then we hit a patch of sunlight, and I see the webs streaming off her like the tapes of a thousand marathon wins.

Lacking a matchlock gun, I’ve taken to wearing my yellow raincoat with the hood pulled up for defense. It doesn’t help me avoid the webs, but at least I no longer feel them dragging eerily across my skin. Sometimes, I even manage to pretend they aren’t there at all, and I enjoy the sunrise nearly as much as my dreamy dog.

Until yesterday. The windows were opaque with fog when I rolled out of bed for the morning walk. I was a bit jumpy – we’d stayed up late watching horror movies the night before, and this was exactly the kind of fog zombies come lurching out of. Reality turned out to be much worse.

Fog on spider silk is like a blacklight on a love motel wall – you can see everything and really wish you hadn’t. I stopped in the middle of the road gobsmacked by the unimagined scale of the spiders’ handiwork. It coated every surface: gobbed white over the bushes and draped along the bridge railings. Long threads dangled from tree branches and stretched wildly across the sidewalks like the laser security system in a heist movie. The neighborhood was one enormous spider web.

I’ve been walking through this every day, my brain stuttered then stopped.

Charlie tugged on the leash, and I followed numbly. Now I could make out dozens of monstrous lacework webs, visible against the blur of mist. Presumably the spiders had been spinning them all along. They were not messing around; I counted seven tangled across one bridge entrance alone.

I scurried by, illogically relieved it wasn’t the entrance we usually took. Holy crap, those webs are huge! What the hell are they hunting?

And then I stumbled back in horror, yanking Charlie with me. The next bridge, our bridge, was gated by a single, massive web. It stretched from ground to railings to the tree branches above, forming an enormous net set to collapse over the first creature that passed through.

It was as big as me.

So that’s it. I’m never leaving the house again. Charlie’s going to have to learn to use a toilet because I’m locking the door and—holy shit they know where we live!

Hang on a moment while I burn down the house.

-Erin

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