Call me spiderwoman

I’m sharing this mostly because I just found out how incredibly stupid I was. Which really isn’t too much of a surprise but still. I have a brain, a pretty good one with rational thought and plenty of logical reasoning capabilities. Yet, I seemed to forget all that and acted like a fool. So I wake up last Saturday kinda late. By late I mean 6:30 as the sun literally shines in my faces too bright to sleep any longer. And yes, that is sleeping in. I usually get up at 4:45. So, sleeping in and taking full advantage of a lazy Saturday I go over to my kitchen to make a little French press coffee and an omelet. There, in my sink, clinging with all eight legs to my French press is a spider. A big spider. Like huge. Like Hobbit eating big.

Not being able to control the girlish shriek that came out of my mouth I then proceeded to do a special heevy-jeevy dance all around my apartment. Then, realizing that yes, I am all alone and yes, that big-ass spider is real- I, me, moi, mwen- I was the one that needed to take care of it. So I thought about my options:

1) Kill the spider

2) Catch the spider, and like the crickets that I capture, fling it from my balcony

3) Leave my apartment for the day in hopes that the spider was just passing through. Then proceed to lay awake for the remainder of my time here in pure fear of waking up face to face with one.

4) Run away, run fast! Move into a new apartment, this one is definitely occupied

Then I weighed my options:

1) If I kill it, how would I do it…shoe? Bazooka? Mustard gas? What if it didn’t die and I made it angry and it came at me like a spider monkey? What if its guts exploded everywhere? And to kill it, I would have to get close. Very close.

2) Catching it, super easy. I have a cup that is reserved exclusively for this activity. Although I only use it for crickets. So getting a much bigger animal into it? Hmm… then how will it be transported without leaving said cup and crawling up my arm to my face?

3) This is not an option. I treasure my sleep and do not want to revisit the week after the mamba was killed behind my hut laying on my bed in pure terror. I had nightmares that a snake a la basilisk style would surround me in my sleep and slowly digest me over the hot season. I can only imagine similar nightmares as a monster spider gingerly weaves a web around me and turns my insides to jelly. Plus, what if the spider, misreading my lack of action in getting rid of it decides to become a permanent resident?

4) There is nowhere to run.

And what did I do with my options? I choose option 1. It. Must. Not. Live. But rather than pick up my one of my heavy shoes, or a brick, or anything that was heavy I choose… a knife. Yes, I picked up a knife and decided that stabbing it to death was my best option. Like I said before, rational thinking did not occur to me. It was a big spider. So with knife in hand I took a couple of deep breaths (somewhere off in the distance I’m pretty sure that Eye of the Tiger was playing) and made my attack. With one terrifying and expertly placed swiped I cut the thing in half. (Nevermind I could feel it struggling beneath me). But then… the front half ran away. Yes, that’s right. The front half of the spider aka the head and four legs ran away. Cutting it in half didn’t kill it. So what’s a girl gotta do to kill a damn spider? Stab it! And yes, that did kill the front half of the spider.

I figured that the spider was just a small baby tarantula. They’re relatively common in the area near my apartment so I figured, cool. A tarantula. I’ve never seen one in the wild. Granted the “wild” doesn’t really mean my kitchen sink, but hey – it’s exotic. I’m really in it now! No, just for fun this morning I looked up pictures of tarantulas and spiders in Haiti and guess what? It wasn’t one. Nope, I had decided to go head to head with a brown recluse. Yep. And not just any brown recluse. I mother-giant of one. Yea, super venomous and I should have probably chosen any other option other than option 1 because guess what – brown recluse spiders can still live even after they lose part of their body. Chopping it in half does not kill a brown recluse, rather, it pisses it off.

After reading up on my little dead friend, I learned the following; I have created a brown recluse haven in my apartment. It’s the right temperature, there are places to hide (under the cabinets, in the clothes piled on my bed, in my dresser, under my bed) and plenty of things to eat. Guess who’s super cleaning her place this weekend? That’s right, this girl. And I won’t be chopping things in half anymore – the shoe it is! And maybe a little bit more rational thinking.