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Friday, April 27, 2012

Near-death experience had multiple legs

Spring has barely sprung and I have already had a near-death experience. It was awful and I tremble just sitting here thinking about it. I was moving a few items around in the shed, doing some of that spring cleaning that is so popular this time of year, when ‘it’ nearly got me.
Had it not been for my ninja-like reflexes, ‘it’ may have been the end of me. ‘It’ was the biggest, blackest, hairiest, nastiest, ugliest spider I have ever seen in my life.
This thing was a monster. It was so large a tarantula would call it ‘Sir.’ I moved some gardening implements and it scurried out from its dark hiding spot of doom and ran at me like the multi-legged demon spawn it was.
I did what any 250-pound man would do: I jumped straight up and yelled like a small, frightened child. My reflexes saved my life. Not because the spider was deadly, but because if it would have actually touched me I likely would have died from a heart attack.
As it was, my heart was beating out of my chest as my foot came crashing down on the arachnid with as much force as I could muster, turning the terror into a splootch mark on the floor. Thank God I have big feet – all the better to stomp a spider into oblivion with, my dear.
Now before People for the Ethical Treatment of Spiders, get their tie-died undies in a knot, I would like to
say it was either him or me. It was a fight to the death. The spider made the first move so technically I acted in self defense. I was just innocently cleaning out my shed when this beast from the deepest reaches of insect hell launched a sustained and aggressive attack.
Some may argue the spider was merely trying to get away, and that it was I who was at fault. To those people I say pooh-pooh to you. The only good spider is a dead spider. In case you have not figured it out by now, I do not like spiders.
I have never been fond of arachnids, but my stark-raving fear of the beasts was born from an incident in my youth. It was an event so traumatic I have a hard time talking about it even now. It was during a school camping trip to an area lake where me and a few friends (yes I actually had friends in elementary school, and not all of them were imaginary) were running through the woods when I plowed into a massive spider web that enveloped my entire body.
OK, it was not that big, but it did wrap around my face and head. Anyone who has done something similar knows how freaky it can be, but wait, it gets worse.
The spider was in the middle of the web when I crashed into it. As I went through the web, the spider, that was just slightly smaller than a Alaskan King Crab, ended up in my left eye socket where it wiggled around before scrambling up my face and into my hair.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek - is an understatement. Not only did I squeal like a frightened baby pig, I jumped and thrashed and danced around like I was on fire.
Of course my friends had no idea what was going on and when I calmed down enough to tell them, they offered me all the sympathy they could muster – by laughing their heads off.
Prior to the incident I was not a huge fan of spiders, but they did not induce the heart-stopping terror I deal with today. So every time I see a spider I consider it self defense and a fight to the death.
If I have said it once, I have said it a thousand times: the only good spider is a splootched spider.

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