Oh, what a tangled web we weave...accused of spinning yarns

I wouldn't say I have an over-whelming fear, per se, of spiders. I'm certainly not a big fan and I definitely don't intentionally seek them out. I experience foreboding feelings whenever I walk down the dark hallway of my school...sure that a spider is lurking...dangling from a single thread like a little lint-sized pinata. It happened once...turns out, when called upon, I am the limbo champion of the world. When it comes right down to it...I would say that I have a healthy respect for my arachniadic acquaintances...so long as I can go my way and they go their's.

So of course Sydney and Savannah would move to an area of the country heavily populated by eight-legged friends. In fact, San Diego serves as the tarmac for the annual tarantula migration. It is also home to Black Widow spiders, jumping spiders, orb-weaving spiders, and the venomous brown recluse spider.

During a recent visit, I had tip-toed down to the living room couch in the middle of the night as my sleep schedule refused to tabulate West Coast time. I hadn't yet received my Ted Talk on how to work the remote so I settled for cellular surfing. The house was ghostly quiet when, suddenly, the skin on my arm prickled. Glancing down, I spied a large brown leaf on the wrong type of limb. I stifled a scream and sent that spider flying. He catapulted through the air and landed on Sydney's white, tiled kitchen floor. Stunned from being shot-putted, the spider tried to gather its wits while I realized that I hadn't dramatized his dimensions. He was almost Jurassic in proportion. As we both recovered from the shock of our experiences, we both began to slowly move. His intent was to escape...Mine was to kill. This was a brown recluse spider. ("Are you sure?" Sydney asked later, "Did he have a violin on his back?" "He must have packed it away in his case," I told her, "And he dropped his saxophone during the cannonball launch")...he did not belong indoors. My mama raised me to gently move bugs outdoors but fear transformed me from humane to Hulk.

Obviously, I was barefoot. I searched my surroundings for a tissue and snatched a paper towel. Quivering, I approached my mid-night intruder. My aim must be true, I said to myself, envisioning the spider battling back, shaking out of the shrouds to crawl up over my murderous hand. Oh so gently, I eased my way across the floor and then I pounced...employing a heart-breaking but effectively efficient smush/pinch/snub out like a cigarette method. 

The deed was done.

I sat, unblinking in the darkness, the corpse behind me, enshrined in its trash-tomb. I stared around me, fearing familial reprisal. I held my breath. The house was silent except for the whisper of a heartbeat. Mine? I gasped. His? 

Author's note:  

During the writing of this awful re-telling of an experience that haunts me still, Brad and Sydney have been on speaker phone, LOUDLY debating the actual species identification of my spider. "I think it was a Water Orb Spider," Sydney corrected, despite the fact that she was snoozing peacefully while I was battling for my life and barely listened to my recounting the following morning. "Wow," she'd said, "Is there any coffee?" She and her father researched the YELLOW-legged spider and began to exclaim in horror, "Oh my gosh, it's so big! It's eating a bird!" "Look at this one! It's eating a snake!" I sent them the image I had taken before the conclusion (That I had sent to everyone BEFORE and no one had cared).

Father and daughter then spent an additional thirty minutes trying to prove me wrong. Condemnations included:

"You should have counted the eyes." (Said to me, in disgust)

"I think she may have been exaggerating the size."

"The brown recluse spider is NOT indigenous to San Diego!"

"You should have gotten a better picture," they scolded.

They finally landed on the Wood Louse spider. Nope...never-mind. Now they're on the Chilean Recluse. Where was this interest when I was battling for my life?

Oh great...Savannah just joined the debate.