Final Descent For Main Street Spider

By Nancy K. Crevier

“This hallowed doorway was once the home of Charlotte. She was brilliant, beautiful, and loyal to the end. Her memory will be treasured forever.” —Wilbur the pig, Charlotte’s Web movie based on the book by E.B. White

Take a close look at Newtown’s own Charlotte the spider as she makes her descent down the enormous web anchored at the peak of Hillbrow House, 74 Main Street, on Halloween night. It is the grand finale, the end of the life cycle, for the giant fiberglass arachnid that has sent thousands of children screaming into the nearby bushes since her first appearance in 2001.

“Last year we added an egg sac to the web a couple of days before Halloween and had a spider ‘hatch’ on Halloween. We got a letter from the kids on Bus 25, I think it was, who really liked it,” chuckled Charlotte’s creator, Richard Mulligan.

“Dear Spider Man,” read the penciled letter. “We wanted to let you know how much we enjoyed passing the spider every day on the bus on our way to school. We especially liked the life cycle. Kids on bus # 25.”

He responded in a letter published in The Newtown Bee, “I’m glad you enjoyed passing the spider every day on your bus ride to school. It was fun for us too! I didn’t realize we were teaching the life cycle. It’s called the law of unintended consequences.”

“Now, it just seems that it is natural to complete the cycle this year,” Mr Mulligan added on Tuesday, October 21, as he looked up at the web splayed across the front of his house.

Mr Mulligan was inspired to deck out his house at the head of Main Street seven years ago when his daughter, a teacher at Newtown Middle School, brought home a web and announced it would be for the front of the house. But Mr Mulligan realized right away that a six-by-six-foot web would just not do the trick.

“We studied how spiders make a web and then made it out of clothesline, big enough to cover the whole house front,” Mr Mulligan recalled. But a web without a spider is just not scary. So he stuffed a big black plastic bag with newspapers, added some legs made out of gray, pipe insulation, and Charlotte was born. That first year, the spider sat menacingly still on the web, but in subsequent years, his neighbors George Moser and Bob Smith started pitching in and by 2002, Charlotte had been mechanized, traversing a system of wires powered by a drill motor.

“George wanted the spider bigger, and he had the idea to add jointed legs made of plastic pipe,” Mr Mulligan said.

“Somewhere along the way,” recalled Mr Smith, “we decided to use those big foam pool noodles for the legs, too.” A former construction project manager, it was Mr Smith’s suggestion that the spider could be kept balanced by the addition of smaller pulleys alongside her belly and by shifting her weight with overhead pullies.

“The drill motor was too noisy, though,” said Mr Moser. The next year, the three friends tweaked the design and Charlotte was fitted with a pulley system operated from within the house. Hauled to the top of the web, hand-over-hand by the men taking turns, the ropes would be released and the spider would rush down the web, her foam legs flailing, her red eyes flashing. The spider is refurbished every year, said Mr Mulligan. “We’re always changing the face a little, and coming up with new ideas,” he said.

One year the men added a smoke generator to make the spider breathe smoke as she made her way down the web. Another year, they crafted butterfly wings from foam core. The wings, on springs, were moved by an oscillating fan, and created the illusion that the spider was making a feast of the butterfly.

Last year, passersby the big blue house noticed something new attached to the web for the two days before Halloween. That was the “egg sac” idea. On Halloween of 2007, a baby spider “hatched” and balanced on the web near the “mama.”

The giant spider web has attracted attention, with visitors not just from all over Connecticut, but from as far away as Massachusetts, California, and Maryland, as well. The Mulligan spider web was also featured in the New York and Region section of The New York Times in 2002.

At the peak of the evening, which begins around 4 pm each Halloween and runs until nearly 9:30 pm, Mr Mulligan, Mr Smith, and Mr Moser haul the spider up the web and release it almost once every five minutes. That is one reason why the men, who are 78, 67, and 63 years old, respectively, have decided to make 2008 the curtain call for Charlotte.

“We are exhausted by the end of the evening. That’s a lot of times running up and down the stairs for us guys,” laughed Mr Moser.

In addition, the trio will be downsized to a duo this coming year when Mr Moser, who retired last year, moves away from Newtown.

The web will be stretched from roofline to the edge of the lawn, the wires strung, and the spider set in place for one last time on Halloween morning, said Mr Mulligan, and most likely will remain in place all of the following day.

 “We’re three guys who have just had a lot of fun doing this,” Mr Mulligan said, “but now it looks like it is time for the life cycle of our spider to be over.”