Spiders

Today a friend mentioned something about spiders on facebook. I went back to check what was said, but of course I couldn’t find the relevant update. I haven’t let minimal or non existent information bother me before, and I will be damned if it will happen now.

So, this comment got me to thinking about spiders and how our lives have crossed again and again and again. I don’t like to mess with spiders, and in fact I have an agreement with arachnids in general. I promise to never again step on every spider I see, if they promise to not crawl in my ears while I am sleeping and feast on my brain. That’s a fair trade I think. You should never mess with a creature that can make it rain when they die, have eight legs, four pair of eyes, pincers, and spin webs from their butts. I am sure that they have other redeeming qualities, and I am sure that most monsters have a soft side.

When the kids were about eight or nine there was this guy (Spiderman) that would come to the school with an assortment of spiders to show the kids. Freaky prick! This guy was at the front of the class with a tarantula and I was at the back of the class by the door about twenty feet away, you know, just in case. The kids are all crowding around so that they could get a chance to pet this fist sized monster when it launched off of Spiderman’s hand straight for me! It sailed through the air like it had wings, and landed on the head of the little kid that was standing right beside me. My heart had just stopped and although I tried to get out of the door, the crowd was pushing me closer and closer! I swear to God that I could smell its fetid breath as it raised one of it’s front legs and gave me the finger!

One beautiful sunny day while I was delivering mail, I took a shortcut under a customers tree, and when I came back out into the sun I looked down and saw thousands of tiny spiders crawling all over my chest! WTF! The only thing that you can do in that situation is to throw your mailbag on the ground and rip your shirt off and alternate between slapping your crotch and your head. You have to keep them away from “Willy” and out of your ears! I’m itching just writing this. I wonder what my customers thought when they were watching this?

On another occasion at work I returned back to the depot for lunch, and when I walked in my supervisor looked at me and said, ”Ken, you aren’t working hard enough!”

“What are you talking about? Did you get a complaint?” I asked, knowing that there was a better than 50% chance someone did complain. He just looked at me and smiled as he reached over and took off my hat. There was a spider’s web from the brim to the peak, complete with flies and spider. I am still not sure whether that high pitched scream came from me or from one of the female carriers. You can’t see, but a shiver just went up my spine while I was thinking about this incident.

I was a Venturer leader (yeah, I know, weird) and took the Venturers to an Alberta Jamboree which was located around Waterton Park in southern Alberta. One of the activities was spelunking. It involved a six hour hike and climb, up a mountain, an overnight camp and another hour or so scramble up to a cave. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a nice warm cave that Yogi and Boo-Boo would live in, but more of an open sewer that was somehow transferred to the top of a mountain. There is a blog there, but for tonight I will stick to when I was sitting by myself in a small cavern with no lights in the middle of a mountain, at least six hours from help. One of my favourite books is the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and I was especially captivated by Shelob, the giant spider that lived at the top of a mountain in a cave that was darker than the darkest night. Shelob was “bloated and grown fat with endless brooding on her feasts, weaving webs of shadow; for all living things were her food, and her vomit darkness”.

Do you see the similarities? Well, so did I. I didn’t get eaten, but I will never be the same, and I will never go into a cave again.