Scared to Death

This is a post I wrote on August 1, 2008 from an old blog I used to have


Yesterday morning, my 18 month old daughter scared me to death. Which, is probably not a very hard thing for my kids to do with all their antics. Anyway, after getting my two sons on the bus for school, I thought I would take my 4 yr old and 18 month old daughters outside to play. It was really nice outside and I had nothing else to do at that time. My wife had taken our 12 year old daughter to the bus and then went on a walk with her mom and sister.

I decided to go around the yard and pick up some toys that the kids had left laying around. So, H was following me around as I picked them up. At one point, I turned around to see where she was and she had something black in her hand. She made a "yucky" face and threw it on the ground. I thought it might be some kind of bug so I went over to see what kind. My heart sank when I saw it was a huge black widow spider. One of the biggest I had ever seen. I promptly stomped on it then grabbed her and ran inside to examine her. She was sucking on one of her fingers so I thought she got bitten. I called my wife in a panic (she and her mom are nurses) and told her the story. They were on there way back from their walk. I watched her for several hours and couldn't find any bite mark. I spend a fair amount of time on the internet looking up the symptoms and treatments for a black widow bite.

Fortunately she didn't get bitten. For the life of me I don't know why she would have picked up a spider. And how she got away without getting bitten is beyond me. I can only believe that God was watching out for her.

It was the craziest thing I have seen one of my kids do yet. That instant I realized it was a black widow, I probably lost several years of my life thinking she had got bit.