The Spider, Man, Is Having Me For Dinner Tonight
October 4, 2005
I was getting dressed this morning and was still thinking about the spider from yesterday.
When you think about spiders, you think you see them. A little scurry in the corner of your eye scuttles itself into you imagination where no cup and postcard can scoop it up to safety.
And then there’s the itching. The uneasy skin when you thin about the eight hairy legs. It unsettles you because you can never be sure of where a spider is until it’s very, very close with eyes and body and teeth like bristling husks – and that brings on the creeping skin. In each fold of your clothes and every bit of bare skin, there’s the itching. Yes, like that.
So I kept thinking I saw a spider. Spider in my slippers, spider in the shower, spider in the towel. I put on my shirt, still imagining a spider and even thought I saw one there as I buttoned up my shirt. Heh, crazy.
I buttoned up my sleeve and then buttoned up the other one, up which was running a Category 3 spider towards my shoulder. I flung off the shirt, or at least tried, because it was buttoned up. The shirt was actually over my head, but I couldn’t get it off, so what I in fact did was to create a little chamber with my shirt, containing a panicked spider, two inches across, one human head and a nice aftershavey smell.
I had to take it back off my head and unbutton the shirt, which contained a live spider somewhere. I flung the clothing to the bathroom floor and did a little dance, brushing my skin and hair to make sure it wasn’t on me. Fingers in the ears, the lot.
I ran into the bedroom where wife was sleeping. “Spider. In shirt,” I gasped, “Cat 3. Many buttons.”
I composed myself and she demanded I kill it. Easy for Lady Macbeth, there, I had to do all the work. I had to return to the shirt and shake it out. I dropped to the floor and I turned to grab a slipper. When I turned back towards it, I saw some legs disappear under the laundry basket. I pushed that to one side and the spider ran to where I pushed it. I pushed it back the other way and WHAMMO!!!
When Tacitus, the Roman historian, deemed that Britain was worth the conquest, he wrote: “the forests were without savage beasts and the ground voyd of noisome serpents.”
Put a spider in his toga and he would have felt differently.
7 comments
Heeeeeee.
Not sure which day it happened, but one day since reading your entry about the useless cats, I got to watch our youngest torture a small spider for an hour.
She bapped it with paws, she chased it under area rugs, she climbed on top of things so that she could pounce with more weight upon it on the floor. Her favorite type of torture: biting it and spitting it back out, watching it scurry and picking it up in her teeth… again.
She did this until the dang thing had no legs left. And then she just chewed it and spit it back out several times… becoming less amused each time. And then she walked away, bored.
The whole time, I was thinking, “Thwok you should head over to Cliff’s. He could use your services!”
Just had to share.
I feel strongly that you could have deployed the cup/postcard combo that has served you so well in other close encounters of the spidery kind.
PS this is one of my favourite posts of yours ever and I have only just found it.
I have to leave this room. I can see two spindly spiders in the corner and I just know there are more of them. Hiding.
This post rocks like pumice.
Thanks for digging this up Katy. Cheers Pete.
I was right. There was another one hiding. It very nearly ran up my arm whilst I was sitting at the computer. I can feel little spidery legs everywhere. Everywhere.
Define ‘Category 3′, please? What otrher categories exist for spiders? PLease educate me.
Katy, those italics were perfect.
Leave a comment. Play nice. I will turn this blog around.