Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Some Thoughts Are Best Left Unthunked or Revenge of the Arachnids

I am not a fan of the spider.

OK, fine.

I'm terrified of spiders.

Happy?

Intellectually I understand they are all around do-gooders and an essential part of the Earth's ecosystem.

I totally get that. Embrace it even. Think it's of the awesome.

However, I've never met a spider who had any respect whatsoever for my personal space bubble.

Take yesterday morning, for instance.

There I am, minding my own business, smoking a last cigarette before heading off to work, reveling in my early morning day dreams, when a spider, unbeknown to me, crept sneakily from his hidey hole onto my shoulder and hitched a ride into my kitchen.

At which point I felt a slight tickling sensation on my neck.

Thinking it was just a stray hair, I reached up to brush the tickle away and felt a squashy mound under my hand...a squashy mound I promptly threw to the floor.

And this is what I saw staring back up at me - frozen in attack stance:




I would love to tell you that I calmly scooped him up on a sturdy piece of cardboard and gently deposited him back out.

But no.

I freaked.

And I squashed him like a bug.

*warning: re-enactment of a homicide ahead*


I know. I'm a terrible human being.

So this morning, I head out to smoke after I've fed the cat and I get to thinking about that spider and the nerve of it landing on me. ME! Like I'm some kind of rapid transit from point A to point B.

And all of a sudden I am gripped with a horrifying thought.

What if that spider had friends.

Friends who saw what I did.

Friends who spent the entire day and night plotting revenge against a murderer?


I'm not sure I'll ever recover from the thought.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spiders are dickheads. I know this for a fact, and I'll tell you why.

I'm one of those people who coax spiders onto pieces of paper and then set them free outside. My husband sends 'em to Stomptown. I have a whole speech I give when people ask me why I don't just squash them and it goes pretty much like this:

A spider who finds itself on my living room wall simply took a wrong turn. I'd like to think that if I took a wrong turn and ended up in a strange neighborhood, one of the locals would be kind enough to point me in the right direction and maybe even help me find the highway.

Blah, blah, blah.

Two winters ago, I woke up one morning with a spider bite on my arm. It was a little red and puffy, but not awful. The next morning, I woke to find a few more on the same arm, and the whole arm hurt like hell. I stripped the bed and cleaned high and low. The next morning, I had two new bites.

I was on a mission to find and kill the little effer. I never did find him or any members of his family, but it took well over a week for the arm to get back to normal. It took a little longer for me to stop getting into bed at night certain that they were gunning for me.

I still take spiders outside, but my reverence for spiders and their I'm-just-lost plight is gone. My husband, the stomper, never got so much as a nibble. Dickheads.

Margi said...

^ WordNerd, that's awesome. They are dickheads!

Jane, I've had those same thoughts when I crush something. Here in Austin, it's the occasional cockroach. Yew!!