Why Don't I Shut UP?

I was telling my good buddy Teresa a story about my tangle with a terrorizing arachnid in my backyard and I thought I'd share. Between you and I, I think its probably much more safe for my general existence to stay out of the yard. Nature and I have no business mingling!

But anyway, last week around 6:30 in the morning I was busy putting the trash out to the curb. There is a small walk way that runs from the back of my house to the front. As I was walking towards the back of the house I felt something on my face and stopped immediately because I'd realized what I'd done.

I had walked face-first into a spider-web. This was no ordinary spider web. This thing could've caught a chrysler mini-van in its grip!

So there I am standing still with the web stuck to my face. And normally I'm not afraid of spiders. But as I stood there with the sticky string tickling my face, I glanced to the right and upward and there it was....A GIANT MOFO'in Spider. This thing was roughly the size of a golf ball and judging by the fact that it started scuttling down its web towards me (it was probably thinking "HOLY SHIT I HIT THE LOTTERY!!!") it wasn't afraid of me.

Everything after that was a bit of a blur. I know that I shrieked a repulsive, girl-like wail. I know I flailed my arms wildly and probably screamed "get it off me" or something relatively valiant. And at some point, I lost my balance and fell head-first into the hedge that separates my property with my owner's.

So there I am thrashing in the bushes, wailing and gasping and kicking. Branch gouged me in the back and neck as their leaves flew up in a wild flurry. I managed to jump to my feet (somehow) in one of those bewildered "I'm cool....I'm alright..." kinda states.

For the rest of the day I could feel that spider crawling on me. Every little tickle or itch made me pause for a second. I spent most of the day pulling bark and leaves from hair as well.

So last night I go out on the back porch to put the dogs out and who should I run into? My arch nemesis, Bastard Spider. It had spun a web on my back porch roughly the size of a large trash can lid. It sat in the middle of the web staring at me. Eyeing me up. I know what it was thinking too....

"there's the one that got away..." I imagined the spider telling his grand-spidlets about the time he almost caught the great white honky

And being the good almost-Buddhist person that I am, I swallowed my urge to take a baseball bat and smack that sumbitch into left field. On the flip side of that, I'm going to take pictures of it tonight if its still there. Then you will see exactly what I'm talking about.

posted by Michael Witmer @ Wednesday, August 11, 2004