Baby-back scares

So, as a woman in the states I had only one reason why the five year old can of hairspray was still in my repertoire of toiletries: Arachnid assassinations. I was a smart shooter with it too. Anything smaller than a daddy long-leg got a five foot distance which took a lot of muster and convincing, Ill have you know! Anything larger than that harmless insect eating eight legged manifestation of horror deserved a careful appraisal then a steady stream for a good twenty seconds, reevaluation, and if necessary a second.
Why these precautionary measures? Because every time I spotted one of these wall stalkers the room quickly disappeared into the barn scene from the original Arachnophobia. Entering the silent darkness I knew my death awaited and screamed as the mutant monster launched itself and ATE MY FACE!
No really. Every time. I had no shame about it too. In front of family, friends, or strangers, I would scream and launch myself across the room, mentally locating the nearest bottle of stiffening agent to render it immobile. I couldn’t even touch the pictures of spiders in books, after watching a children’s movie where the pictures come to life. I was convinced the black widows and tarantulas portrayed in high color photos with descriptions would crawl up my fingertips and once again…. EAT MY FACE! No, this isn’t some long lost memory. This carried me through high school. Rationality was not a highlight of my teenage personality.
I couldn’t swim in lakes because I had studied the Loch Ness monster and watched movies like The Blob and The Thing From the Black Lagoon one too many times.
Why am I telling you this possibly damaging story? Because of what happened one quiet summer night, this November ( its summer for us in Madagascar) as I sat, peacefully on my bed, reading a book as I heated water for my shower.
So there I was. The opposite of any potentially harmful creature as I sat cross-legged in my lamba, waiting to finish y nightly routine as y water heated on the stove. One corner of my mind considered washing y hair, the other absorbed the book. Morality for Beautiful Girls, by Alex Mc Call Smith, the third in the Ladies Detective Agency series. I remember because I had just read a part on the presence of scorpions in shoes and had stopped reading to eye my shoes sitting “harmlessly” on the floor. It was then that a movement caught my eye. I looked up to see a modest sized, spider/tarantula looking thing slowly and disjointedly walking itself up my wall. I paused, the nerves in my arms screaming for hairspray, the nerves in my legs screaming for exodus of the house. Thankfully I had been reading so my brain was still detaching from the book in my lap and therefore postponed the fight or flight response my body was so furiously generating.
Anyone who knows me knows that from a distance my eyes are… well Im not sharp shooter, or owl, or in fact anything that can see well past about 50 feet in front of their face. My eyes are crap, from a distance. This is an important fact for this next part.
I’m still cringing.
I peered at the apparition on the wall and noticed that while its body was a tan color, its back was dark brown. No, I could not see why it was a different color and my inquisitive mind wanted to see what it was. So I carefully got unfolded my legs and got myself up and around the bed, all without taking my eyes off the body making its way up to my ceiling. What I saw was lumpy darkness on the body and figured, with my analytical brain, that it was a clever camouflage. With that said, I picked up my closest shoe, a shower sandal and smacked the body with all the force my controlled fear could muster. It was far too uch and as the sound reverberated off the wall the most remarkable of things happened. Instead of squishing flat, as should happen in such cases, the darkness on the back of the large epitome of nightmares scattered across my walls with great speed. That is when I realized what I had done. You may call it instant karma but as I stared at the fifty baby tarantulas scattering across my wall three thoughts raced through my brain. 1) It wasn’t camouflage. 2) That’s what I get for killing another creature, and the last. 3) If those babies got into my roof space I was f&*^ed! All three of these thoughts were the first three seconds. The fourth second after the murder found me squishing baby tarantulas with… my fingers. That’s right folks. Miss Arachno-spray was now hunting living tarantulas as they fled across her walls, into her clothing, and into her photo book with her bare fingers. Granted they were no larger than the head of a pin but it makes absolutely no difference.
How was this feat accomplished?
The thought of fifty pin sized spiders becoming fifty giant tarantulas all residing above my head. A plank of wood does not offer adequate protection from that situation. That’s all that kept me going. When the genocide was complete and the large corpse had been relocated outside of the house I washed my hands, scrubbed my nails and then realized what I had done.
Then I took a shower. And scrubbed till it hurt.
Thus did I learn my lesson about squishing insects. Three days later I woke to see a giant ciacid ( the screaming bugs) sitting on my computer next to my bed. I carefully picked up the computer and flung the insect out the door. Lesson learned.
Thank you mother nature.