Our son, Kyle, and our daughter-in-law, Sam, were married at beautiful St. Peter’s Church on the Rock on Stony Lake, Ont., in July 2022. The church was enchanting, the cottage was beautiful, and the guests had a wonderful time. Because St. Peter’s is on an island, there was a fair amount of planning needed to transport all the guests from the cottage to the church. Every- thing went off without a hitch. Well, that’s not completely true.
Guests started arriving at our cottage at 2:00 p.m. We’d lined up pontoon boats to pick them up from our dock and boat them to the island where the historic church is located. At one point, with so many guests moving onto the floating dock preparing to board the boats, the dock, large, but not meant to hold that much weight, began to sink. When I realized what was happening, I knew that I needed to tell everyone to either get on board or move off the dock and wait for the next boat. Unfortunately, as I started to give this very important PSA, the dock sank just enough to startle every dock spider underneath.
10 amazing facts about dock spiders
Hundreds of spiders—full-grown and babies—came up from between the boards. No one could hear my advice over the shouts of about 20 people too horrified or too surprised to do much but freeze. One of my sisters, with spiders crawling up her legs, rushed and dove into the boat, clipping her leg on the front pontoon. My twin nieces had high heels on—never a good idea at a cottage wedding—and unsteadily swatted at spiders climbing up their legs, squealing, and then booked it off the dock. All I could do was stand there and helplessly watch the chaos. Luckily, my wife, Janie, was taking care of other details and was not even aware this went on—she would have been mortified.
As the guests either got on the boat or came back to shore, the dock rose, and the spiders went back down where they belonged. Shortly after, as I was talking with my eldest sister, my brother- in-law alerted me to a spider on my jacket. I instinctively flicked it off—directly onto my sister! Needless to say, she wasn’t impressed. I apologized, but was thinking, Sorry sis, but when it comes to dock spiders, it’s every man for himself!
This article was originally published in the June/July 2024 issue of Cottage Life.
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