There is a tiny hole in the backdoor screen I've been meaning to repair since last fall. What's that old line about the road to hell and good intentions?
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Anyway, the evening was nice and cool so I opened the backdoor to enjoy the night air while I sat at the computer catching up with blogs. I noticed a few of the smaller flying insects and a couple of moth-like creatures, about 6mm or 7mm, flitting about, making a slight nuisance of themselves. No big deal, really. I don't mind sharing my space with a couple of little bugs, as long as they don't bite or bring the plague in on their tiny little feet.
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Out of the corner of my eye, I see what I think is one of the moths flying low just above the cord to my phone charger, which dangles down from the top shelf of the desk to the bottom one. Moving rather oddly for a flying insect, I think to myself. I reach for my glasses, the hair at the back of my neck beginning to stand up. That primitive brain is already poised for danger, telling my feet to get ready to take my body out of harm's way.
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Holy crap, it's a SPIDER!!!
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Oh, good god, look at the size of that thing! And it's walking this way! Oh, geeze, oh geeze, ogeeze-ogeeze-ogeeze! Here it comes!
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Do I kill it or just get out of the way? KILL IT--KILL IT!! You have to ASK!?!
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A slightly used tissue leaps into my hand and I strike with rattlesnake precision at the spider the size of a shetland now doing the fireman slide down the cord.
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"I'm sorry, geeze, I am so sorry! Please forgive me."
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Squish-squish-smack, grind and squish.
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"Please forgive me, spider!"
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Shudder, shake and squirm. Pulled three or four more tissues from the box at once, wrap them around the dead (god, please let this thing be dead, I'm begging you, pleasepleaseplease!) spider.
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I shiver in the chair, the adrenalin coursing through my body way out of proportion to the threat, long after the spider is pulverized and can do absolutely nothing to me. Sort of like how a cat's neck fur stands up long after whatever frightened it is gone, you know. The body stays on alert for about five minutes after the spider is dead. Can't help it, just made that way. At least I didn't scream this time.
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I know that the spider was probably doing me a service by coming out of its hiding place after some of those flying bugs that came in through the hole in the screen. Can't help my reaction. It was a SPIDER! This was a wolf spider, about the size of a dime, a young one, probably didn't even have its gaboon viper fangs in yet. And I do feel contrite and remorseful and guilty...somewhat.
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SPIDER! Hello, people! It was a honking huge, fang-bearing, too-damned-many-legs, freaking-me-out SPI-DER!
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I'm fixing that screen first thing in the morning. As soON as all this adreNALine has run THROugh my SYStem!
(c) 2009 Martha McLemore
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