My Spidy Sense Wasn't Working

Just to set the record straight before I proceed with my story, I don't hate spiders. I am not prejudicial against them. I like to watch nature documentaries on them; I watch fictional portrayals of them in such movies as Arachnophobia, Eight Legged Freaks, and Ice Spiders. They serve a useful and necessary role in nature. But when they invade my space, or threaten me or my family's safety, I will kill them without a second thought.

Now, that being said, my eight legged tale began the other evening after my kids were in bed and I was doing my nightly chores before I went to bed. My wife was out of town at work. The only other creatures stirring, so I thought, were my two cats which I am thankful that they weren't nearby at that time.

Since I wasn't suspecting to encounter any creepy crawlers, I was going along minding my own business as I said before, performing my evening chores before bed.

After walking into the kitchen, I felt what I thought was an errant string from my shirt brush against the back of my left arm, which I am sure many of you out there have encountered before.

In feeling this string hanging from my shirt, with my right hand, I casually brushed the back of my arm. To my horror, a dark gray spider the size of a quarter landed on the floor at my feet. I stood there just staring in disbelief. The eight legged hitchhiker sat there not moving, allowing my thoughts that a huge spider had been riding around on my body for an unknown length of time to come to the front of the line.

After a few moments of the both of us staring at each other, my unwanted guest decided to make a break for it. Fortunately this species of spider was not equipped with the ability of high speed movement, or maybe it just chose not to use it. Either way, I took this opportunity to seek out the object I would use for its demise.

Unfortunately my weapon of choice (a shoe) was in the other room and I was afraid this arachnid would make its escape before I could return with it to end his life. Not wanting to contaminate anything on the counter, the only thing I could think of in that instant as I watched the gray freak getting away was a box of tissue. I know, not the ideal weapon to combat a large spider, but I grabbed it anyway.

My first strike hit the mark but due to the lack of rigidity in the construction of the tissue box, the creature was only slightly wounded. My second and third strike thankfully finished the job that I had started. The spider was no longer a threat, nor would it be in the future.

It turned out that using the tissue box wasn't such a bad idea after all. The deceased and the surrounding area needed to be cleaned up and I had a ready supply of tissue at hand already to complete my mission.

In my follow-up investigation as to how a spider of that size was able to hitch a ride on me, retracing my activities prior to the incident, I was unable to ascertain the motive or opportunity of this unwanted guest.

I can't imagine how the situation would have evolved if my wife or one of my kids had spotted the offending arachnid hitching a ride on me. I am sure a lot of screaming and running, and thrashing about would have occurred. I don't know how my kids would have reacted.

I am just glad that this creature didn't decide to hitch a ride on one of them.

This post was written on my trusty old Tandy WP-2 portable word processor.