The following post is rated PG-13 for strong language and disturbing imagery.
Those of you who know me personally, know that very few things freak me the hell out as much as spiders. And in the past six months, it seems that the Island gods have come to recognize this and have decided to teach me a lesson in fearlessness.
The evidence…
Late this summer, I was getting ready for bed one evening, when I looked out of my bathroom into the bedroom and saw a giant spider on the wall by my bed. But not just any spider – it was a tarantula! This thing was so big, you could almost count the hairs on its creepy, not-so-little legs.
A very fuzzy picture of the tarantula – because it was taken from almost 20 feet away!
At this time, I was living by myself, so I didn’t have a designated “in-house-spider-exterminator” who I could lure into the bedroom and lock inside until said spider was taken care of. So, in a panic, I called one of my friends who lives just down the hill, and he (reluctantly, although he would never admit it) came up to take care of the intruder. When he saw it, even he was a bit freaked out!
But with the help of a dried-out sponge mop and a shop vac, he managed to kill and dispose of the spider so I could go to bed. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep very well that night.
Then, a couple of months ago, I came home one evening and noticed something in the middle of my kitchen floor that didn’t belong there. Not an unusual situation when you have three cats. I put away some stuff and piddled around the apartment for a few minutes, failing to investigate the foreign object right away.
When I finally went into the kitchen and turned on the light to deal with what I expected to be a furball or a dismembered cat toy, I discovered that the offending object could move, although just barely. And even though it was missing a few, it obviously had eight legs at one point in its life!
Upon closer (but not too close) investigation, it was unmistakeably deemed to be a brown recluse. Now, although there are more creepy-crawlies on this island than I would like to acknowledge, none of them are highly dangerous or poisonous to humans (none of the land-based ones, anyway). Except brown recluse spiders.
This is what a brown recluse looks like after “playing” with my cats.
Not wanting to inconvenience (and freak out) my friend down the hill for a second time, I decided to handle this one by myself – with the aid of a stiff-bristled broom. I figured since it couldn’t move very well (the cats had obviously been “playing” with it before I got home), I could impale it with the broom bristles and sweep it up and throw the body over the balcony. What I didn’t anticipate was that the spider might get caught up in the broom bristles.
When it disappeared into the broom, I hauled ass outside with the broom and the now “missing” spider, beat it against the side of the building over my balcony, and left it outside in the breezeway until the next morning. Then I tied a trash bag around the bottom part and took it to the dump, just in case the spider recovered and wanted to get revenge.
But the most recent test of my fearlessness was probably the worst. After yoga one evening, I got into the Jeep and was checking my texts before I drove off. The door was open, so the interior lights were on, and that must have woken up an uninvited passenger. Which was…another huge spider!!! This one was as big as the palm of my hand, and I could see his eyes!
He leapt from the passenger-side floorboard into the passenger seat and onto the center console. I jumped out of the Jeep like my seat had just become an electric chair. In a move that is now typical, I panicked for a second. But then I realized that my yoga instructor’s brother was nearby – I could go get him to deal with this situation. (I’m not sure why it always has to be a guy to help out in these instances. I guess it’s the primal “Southern Belle” that comes out when I’m in fight-or-flight mode.) But he was so far away, I was afraid by the time I got to him, explained what was going on, and (hopefully) got him to come take care of the problem, Mr. Hitchhiker would have found a nice cozy place to hide, and I’d have to fumigate the Jeep before I could ever get into it again.
Instead, I grabbed a towel that was conveniently left in the back seat, wrapped it completely around my hand – like eight times – and used that to “pick up” the spider and fling him as far away as I could.
All I can say is that it’s a miracle this ordeal happened while I was sitting in the Jeep, idling. If I had been driving, all three of us – Mr. Hitchhiker, the Jeep, and I – would be in the ocean right now.
But wait – it gets better! On the way home I stopped by my local hangout to say “Happy Birthday” to a friend and have a good, stiff drink to calm my nerves. When I got home, I went to the back of the Jeep to get a box out, and what did I see? Mr. Hitchhiker apparently had a friend, albeit one that was slower and/or dumber and hadn’t quite found his way inside the Jeep yet. That’s right – there was Mr. Hitchiker’s accomplice, staring at me from the back windshield of the Jeep. Seeing him was such a shock that this time I jumped and screamed – so loud that if my neighbors had been home, they would’ve come running to see who was attacking me.
See – I’m not kidding! This thing was HUGE!
I grabbed my trusty towel, and from about six feet away, snapped it at him like a teenage boy in a locker room. Success! I managed to knock him off the Jeep and onto the ground, where I found him camouflaged on a small branch behind one of my tires (another reason to always carry a good flashlight in your purse). There was no way I was letting this fucker live, so I grabbed the biggest rock I could find – about 10 inches in diameter and 10 pounds – and dropped it right on him. Convinced that I had succeeded in killing the creepy bastard, I picked up the rock, and then almost fainted when he came running from under it and up the wall that surrounds my parking area. At this point, it was full-on war.
Can you believe he lived?!
The only weapon I had left within easy reach was a can of OFF, which I proceeded to spray on him as he ran across the top of the wall. When there was no more OFF, I ran downstairs and grabbed a can of Raid. Of course, by the time I got back upstairs to the parking area, he was nowhere in sight. But I sprayed the hell out of that wall, the ground around the Jeep, and over the wall as far as I could reach.
I have a feeling the Island gods aren’t going to let me win this one, and he’s still up there, plotting his revenge. All I can say is that thankfully, he’s on the other side of the building from my apartment.
A note to the Island gods…Just keep in mind that you won’t have anyone to torment if you give me a heart attack.
Key's in the Conch Shell 