Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Mug full o’ spider



Last Thursday I was lying on the floor watching Burn Notice. I mean a biography on Albert Einstein. Yes, that was what I was doing, watching a biography to improve my brain.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. I turned my face and there, three inches from my eyes was the biggest spider that I have ever ever seen outside of a pet store, or loose in a friend's car in high school.

Let's explore that for a minute…..my friend who shall remain nameless, but his initials are Jeff Kaehler, had a pet tarantula that got loose in his car. Prior to the escape the spider had been much loved and well tended. Jeff reveled in displaying the spider's prowess at snapping #2 pencils with its formidable jaws. Therefore, once it was loose in the car there wasn't a lot Jeff could do about finding it and returning it to its cage if he also valued his fingers. And he did. Value his fingers that is. Sooooo, he left his poor lovely spider in the car, with the windows up, in the hot sun, in August, for days…..hoping that it would get hungry and come out so he could catch it. Or alternatively, and sadly, meet its demise so he could safely resume driving his car.

Now, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the story I heard was that after a week of no sign of the spider, he got into the car and drove away to the self serve car wash to use their giant vacuum cleaner to dispose of the corpse.

About half way there, he felt a slight tickle on his leg. He looked down, and sure enough there was his furry friend climbing his leg. He managed to pull over, capture the little guy in a baseball hat and put him in the glove box. Then he drove home, got the cage, opened the glove box, the spider JUMPED into his house and began devouring the waiting food. So all was right in spider land that day.

My story has a murkier ending.

I have always been a person who catches bugs and lets them go outside if at all possible. Where I live now my windows have fixed screens, so anything bigger than a ladybug can't be released out of the windows.

The evening of the visit from the giant spider I was already in my jammies. My front door opens onto a hallway, not to the great out of doors.

When I saw the giant spider, I jumped up and went into the kitchen to get something to catch it in. My dishwasher was running and all of my glasses and large mugs were inside. I scrambled around and found the mug in the photo.

I put the mug down in front of the spider and he climbed in. HE JUST BARELY FIT. I covered the top with a paperback book and ran squeaking to my front door. I tossed him into the hall as close to the exit door as possible.

There's a gap under the door and my hope was that he would find it and go outside. I went back to watching Burn Notice. I mean Albert.

A few minutes later I heard panicked screaming in the hall. It was a man's voice, screaming in a high pitched girly way and also swearing, quite loudly and inventively, in a much less girly way. A lot of doors opened and shut while other tenants looked out to see what was up.

I cracked my door and watched the spectacle. The guy was hopping around on one foot and then actually LEAPED into the air and grabbed hold of the staircase rail in one big sideways motion. He scrabbled at the rail with his feet churning until he found purchase for his giant sneakers and then he disappeared from sight.

I closed my door grinning and went back to watching tv. I checked the next day and there was no giant squished spider in the hall. My hope is that the little spider guy came to no harm and is living happily outside.

Now my question is, does it make me a sexist because I found the freaking out guy funny? If it had been a woman or a child who discovered the little hairy guy, I would have felt bad about tossing a giant spider into the hall and scaring them.

But since it was a guy, I was amused.

Hmmmm….maybe I'm a closet sexist and don't know it….

[does some soul searching]

Nope, I'm pretty sure that no sexism was in play since the whole amusement thing hinged on this PARTICULAR guy freaking out about something that was one one hundreth of his size, and that he could have easily squished with his giant number twelve sneakers.

I hope you don't think less of me.

And speaking of thinking less of me…I wasn't watching a program about Albert Einstein to improve my brain.

I was watching Michael Weston blow stuff up. So there. And I bet Michael wouldn't have been bothered one little tiny bit by a big black hairy four inch spider…… unless it showed up in his yogurt. Then he would probably have been pissed. Michael hates it when anybody messes with his yogurt.



20 comments:

mdvelazquez said...

Why, pray tell, was Jeff driving around with his pet in the first place?

You might be a wee bit sexist and I don't think less of you. :-) I must be too because I probably would have laughed too.

I've been tempted to start watching Burn Notice.

Karen from Mentor said...

Hey Maria,
I love burn notice. There's just something about it. Probably the flagrant moralizing..lol...or the fact that every week I learn something new....like one week? I learned that even if the drug cartel has armored cars, if I bounced bullets UNDER the car off the road they would penetrate the undercarriage and then I could kidnap the head honcho....Hey...when I'm published I can probably write off my cable bill....as research.

Rachel S said...

Now wait wait, was it MICHAEL blowing things up, or Fi? Because if Michael was blowing things up without Fi she'd probably get pissed and blow HIM up.

By the way, anyone know where I can get a block of C4?

Karen from Mentor said...

Morning Rachel,
I stand corrected. It would definitely be Fiona blowing things up....and the c4? In the truck of my ca.....um...email me...we'll talk.

Ashley said...

1. You shouldn't be ashamed of watching Burn Notice.
2. This was hilarious.
3. Who cares if you were being sexist. Like I said, hilarious.

j said...

I'm a catch and release person too. Though a hairy spider too big for that cup may have been more than I could deal with (you stud). In those situations, I call Chad to come trap the spider and I give him all sorts of inane advice while he's doing it - from a distance of course - and if he walks toward a door that I'm standing near there is all manner of girly squealing and shenanigans.

That said,I'm not a sexist. I'm descriminating based on height. Which means Chad is our first string spider remover and I'm not even out on the field anymore. All the boys have outgrown me... so to speak.

Lauren C said...

This was outrageously funny. I really started laughing when you threw the spider into the hallway... Excellent. Or as my inner surfer/skater would say, "Righteous."

Karen from Mentor said...

Lauren Duuuuuude,
glad you and your inner surfer enjoyed it.
:0)

Karen from Mentor said...

Judy,
Can I add that to my superpowers? studdishness?
I love that chad is your white knight and that you direct his knightishness from afar.
And delegating jobs by height only seem sensible.(bonus: I got to picture you in one of those tall cone shaped damsel in distress hats with the long purple veil off the back....nice!)

I've been worried all day that someone(probably someone with super powers of anality) was going to come in and comment that if the mug was four inches tall as demonstrated by the measuring tape, the spider could not ALSO have been four inches....but the thing is? It was ACTUALLY bigger than the mug.....when it crawled into the mug it kinda scrunched itself down.....eeeewwwwww

Karen from Mentor said...

Ashley:
1)ok, I won't...whew!
2)ok and thank you
3)a reprieve! and thank you again. :)

Thanks for coming in Ashley,
if you come in a lot, after a few weeks? you get the official tiara....the commenter ones don't light up like the ten questions tuesday ones do, but still it's a pretty nice tiara.
(let's see sir beat that)

Frank Marcopolos said...

Spiders are good pets, I've heard.

Karen from Mentor said...

Hey Frank,
With that comment we could revisit the whole little carnivore in the kitchen comment thread.

When my daughter was growing up we had stick bugs, newts, anoles, a corn snake,
frogs, toads, rats (nice), mice (stinky) an AWESOME bearded dragon (which she still has) ...and almost a giant centipede...but no spider... I like spiders outside, preferably making webs with words like "humble" in them.
:)

Rougeneck said...

I haven't read previous comments (you know me...) so don't know if I'm being repetitive...but OMG GIRL...you are too flipping nice. I would have squashed that bastard right then and there. Course, I would have missed out on all of the scaring-the-living-crap-out-of-my-not-so-manly-neighbor fun so maybe you made the right choice. And for the record, I kill EVERY creature that crawls, flies and otherwise creeps its way into my house - except for lady bugs. Cuz they're so sweet.

And BTW - Why the eff were you friends with someone who had a tarantula? Love ya girl but file this in Twitter under #holyhellthatseffingweird. xxx

Rachel S said...

NO NO NO MILLIPEDE! Centipedes are horrible. EEEK!

Karen from Mentor said...

OH My gosh Rachel...yes millipede...millipede...all those little tickly feet....


my only excuse was the comment was typed BEFORE I ate my giant bowl of cheerios filled with fresh fresh (yum) blueberries....sorry...I know how you feel about centipedes....cringes..yuck yuck yuck revisit sorry :)

Karen from Mentor said...

Sarah, he was cute.

and how can you be so sweet (and anal) about your outside critters but hate bugs!!!! Wait, it's probably the fur...you're a scale/wing/multi legged creature bigot aren't you....FOR SHAME.

I had a friend who had THOUSANDS of ladybugs hatch in her house...she was freaked out....I think that she might have been experiencing an overdose of sweetness.

Unknown said...

Good for you! He'll be out there, hunting down cockroaches and ridding the world of tasty fly larvae.

And I would have laughed, too...but felt bad about it later ;)

Karen from Mentor said...

Merrilee,
I often see funny things that people do. Since you're new to the blog, please let me recommend a posting from 6/19 called "Life's little delights" or a posting from 6/11 called "Spongebob is my copilot" both of these are also "things I've seen thursdays" and are pretty funny if I do say so myself...and I just did..
my only problem with having a blog is that soon I will have no first date stories....cause everyone will tell my stories as though they happened to them....

P.S. In Ohio we don't allow cockroaches...we just have nice sanitary bugs... :0)

Rachel S said...

I don't know.... I saw this huge cockroach in the basement of my dorm building two days before I moved out. I'll tell you what, that was a long two days. (sees a shadow) WHAT WAS THAT?

Anonymous said...

Oh I just had a scare last night. There I was minding my own business, waiting to fall asleep when I looked over to the wall and saw a big (thank God not as big as you described) spider crawling towards me. There's no need to say that I shouted and was out of bed in a heart beat!
I'm terrified of spiders :(
I can totally imagine myself in that guy's place. But a guy that scared is really funny!
But you're very brave! I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to take him out :)