And gallantly he chickened out

[katernater]

Earlier tonight, I was lying on the couch in the living room, watching Chris Carter's beautiful testament to the miracle of in-vitro fertilization ("If you love her enough to say it with flowers, just think of how much more you can scream it with your swimmers in a specimen cup.") when this huge -- and I mean HUGE -- spider walked around the corner and started across the carpet toward the edge of the couch. This thing had an abdomen as big as a bing cherry. You could fit a map of Asia and Russia on there, with room to spare for all those little, incidental occupied countries. It stopped about a foot and a half away from me, big body twitching (and pulsing with poison, probably) and we stared at one another, two eyes against eight. Remarkably, for being a couple of rungs higher on the food chain, the sight of this particular spider pushed me back a couple of evolutionary epochs. I hate spiders. As a kid, I used to have these awful nightmares of being sucked into the mouths of giant spiders and spun out the back of them, like human gossamer. Based on childhood trauma, it was clear that this particular spider and I weren't going to get along. At all.

My dad always taught my brother and me that you never, ever take the life of another living thing (with the exception of mosquitos and phone solicitors), so I couldn't bring myself to squish the thing with my shoe (which I don't think I could bring myself to do anyway -- more than the spider itself, I think I'm afraid of the, uh, squish that it'd leave behind) so I made sure that it looked like it was asleep before I got up off the couch to find a cup and paper to use to put it outside.

When I got back, implements in hand, the spider had moved. It was now stretched out on the ridge of carpet separating the living room from the foyer, long legs creeping over the divide. I steeled myself and started to put the cup over it (I made sure that I had a glass with a wide mouth -- there was no way I was risking unintentional contact) when it jumped toward the tv. JUMPED. LIKE A KANGAROO. I took one look at it in its new locale and said, "...Well, fuck that." I put the cup and paper back in the cabinet and got the hell out of there.

Now I'm worried that I'm going to step on it whenever I go downstairs.

I am so lame.

Comments

[outintherain.livejournal.com]

It JUMPED?

Gah.. Jesus... *shudders*

See, I couldn't kill anything that size... purely because of the proximity that must be necessarily be achieved to kill it... I prefer to greet my spiders from the other end of a long vacuum handle...

That being said, I can keep my peace with anything smaller than a 1 euro coin... I had a spider living in the corner of my bedroom last semester... I called him Bob... I think he died eventually... well, he stopped moving anyway...

I'm usually the spider vanquisher in my household because I am fearless with a vacuum and apparently have no soul... but anything that JUMPS? That's a whole new realm of shit...

[katernater.livejournal.com]

A vacuum cleaner, huh? That's a novel way to get rid of spiders. I think I'd be okay with that method of dispatchment. Of course, the vacuum cleaner we have is one of those with the clear, plastic chambers? No bag, right? So I'd suck the spider and then have to watch it spin around in the chamber, which would be horrible, horrible, horrible.

But I think it's cute that you were on a first name basis with the spider in your bedroom. You're one classy lady.

[outintherain.livejournal.com]

Ohmaigawd ok no... our vacuum is actually older than me, and very much encased in non-transparent plastic...

I like to name things... *is slightly bizarre* I had a George last week actually, but he moved too close to my bed and had to go to vacuum heaven... haha I don't think I have *ever* been called classy before lol...