I'm man enough to admit it.
I'm not ashamed to admit I made a noise
typically reserved for a small, frightened child before fleeing like
I was on fire when it happened.
And I had every good reason to be
scared, because it was scary.
It happens every spring and gets worse
as the days get warmer and stretch into the summer months.
But with all the rain this year and the
cooler weather, it really hasn't been that bad.
"It" is interactions of the
spider kind.
I hate spiders. Not many things in this
world scare me as much as an arachnid. Big, small, fat, skinny, you
name it, if it's a spider I do not like it.
My most recent encounter with one of
the eight-legged terrors was when I was working in my garage.
I grabbed a pair of coveralls I have
hanging from a nail to do an oil change on my car.
For some reason, I shook the garment
before putting it on, something I never do.
Call it the voice of God, dumb luck or
some other glorious interaction of the divine kind, but when I shook
it, a large spider fell out of a sleeve.
Eeeeek! does not even begin to describe
how I felt. And this was no ordinary spider. This guy must have been
on steroids because I have never seen one this big, this early in the
year.
Sure, there are billions of little
spiders roaming the area, and being the big, tough guy that I am,
they hardly bother me, but this one was the size of a bagel.
It was so big, I could feel the ground
vibrate as it fell from my coveralls and landed on the concrete.
OK, maybe the ground didn't vibrate,
but I did pee a little and jumped 10 feet straight back as the black
mass of doom raced for cover under a nearby cupboard.
It was at that moment, I knew I must
take action, for if the monstrosity managed to find cover, I would
likely never be able to enter my garage again knowing it was in
there, watching, waiting for the right moment to pounce.
So, I summoned up all of my courage and
sprang into action: I leapt across the room and smashed my foot down
on the offending critter with such force my toes were numb for an
hour; the impact of rubber sole hitting the smooth concrete was
so loud it sounded like I had shot the spider instead of crushing it
to death.
At least, I hoped I crushed it to
death. I stood for second frantically looking around to see if the
beast,which must have been some sort of Jurassic spider because of
its sheer size, was embedded in the bottom of my shoe.
Slowly, I lifted my foot and to my
relief I found an assembly of spider guts and legs smooshed into a
gooey mass.
Yay, me.
I had survived a potentially lethal
encounter with an arachnid.
Then one of the scariest thoughts I
have ever had formed in my mind: if this spider was that big this
early in the year, what will be waiting for me over the next few
weeks.
Even as I write this, I shudder at the
thought.
Perhaps going outside is over-rated.
Perhaps there are benefits to living in
a sealed room with filters and screens and anti-spider lasers
surrounding the house.
Am I over reacting?
No! No, I am not.
Copyright 2017, Darren Handschuh
No comments:
Post a Comment