Another Embarrassing Girly-Ass Spider Story

I just read one of the funniest and most outrageously icky comments EVER, back at this post, and it reminded me of How I Spent My Thursday Evening.

I had just come home from work, to a Snickless house, which meant it was quiet and largely undestroyed. I did my usual little coming-home routine--empty the pockets, open a Pepsi, and call Mom. As I'm talking to Mom, I happen to look over to where the cats' water-dishes are. "Mom?" I said. "I'll call you back."

Lazy little critter that I am, I have a series of bowls which are designated "cat bowls". Sometimes in the morning, I'll put down a fresh water bowl without picking up the previous day's bowl, and so right at the moment I have three bowls sitting in the cat space--one full, two empty. One of the empties has been there for a few days, so it's now bone-dry and empty.

Except on Thursday? It wasn't empty. On Thursday, it contained a spider that was the twin brother of Ol' Seven-Legs, the spider from the last post. (And no, it wasn't Ol' Seven; I counted the legs and unless they can regenerate, this was a totally different spider.) It was about the size of one of those plastic spiders from a Halloween ring, and looked almost exactly like one--in fact, I had to look twice to make sure it was real. It wasn't moving, which was a blessing greater than I can tell you; but it was THERE, and BadCat seemed grossly uninterested in doing anything about it. And Snick was at the vet, and LJ's still out of town, and there was no way--NO way--that I was getting near enough to that nasty thing to kill it. And "live and let live" is not an option, not in my kitchen.

So I was left with a conundrum. I went through the usual killing-from-a-distance scenarios--Fantastik, the vacuum hose, the Swiffer--but rejected all of them for various reasons. And finally, I went outside, onto the porch. Phoebe, my neighbor, was out on her porch, and I asked her "Is Junior around?" Junior is her son, or her nephew, or something--I have yet to untangle all the relatives at my neighbor's house, even after three years here--but he's male, and young, and wouldn't back down from a spider. But Junior also wasn't home; he was out with Len, and wouldn't be back for a while. "How about Lil' Man?" He's about eleven or twelve, and he was gung-ho to do the killing til Phoebe put the kibosh on it--"If he does it, that spider will get away. He's scared." ("I ain't scared!" Lil' Man protested, to which his mother replied with a scornful "N****, please.") So that, too, was out of the question.

Fortunately, at that point, I was mobbed by the neighborhood little ones, who love my cats and consider me a curiosity because I don't treat them the same way all the other adults do--I don't yell at them, or tell them to go home, or raise my voice. They're always asking me "Can we see your cats?" And since I had nothing else to do, I brought BadCat out on the porch for a viewing session. They petted him, asked me all sorts of questions ("How come he's so big?" "What does he eat?" "Where's your other cats?") and were just generally cute. And they offered me advice about my spider problem, although it was more commisseration than advice. "I'm scared of spiders too," one little girl assured me gravely.

After a few minutes, Len, Junior, Junior's girl, and the baby came home. "Hey Junior," I hollered. "Lemme borrow you for a second! I've got some killin' for you."

He came in, and dispatched the spider, and wrapped him in a piece of newspaper and took him outside and plopped the corpse on the walk, for a proper viewing. The older ones laughed at the scaredy-cat white lady, and the little ones ooh'ed and ahh'ed at what REALLY was a big, ugly spider. And I thanked everyone, and promised the babies that if they were outside tomorrow when I came home, I'd let them meet Snickers, and then I went back into my nice safe spiderless house and ate my dinner.