I stumbled onto this post by Meryl Yourish and flashed back to an ugly incident that I had with a large spider.

About 10 years ago, I lived in a 50 year old house that had a detached garage. The garage contained a Smithsonian quality vintage refrigerator inside that surprisingly still worked. The 100 or so bottles of beer that I brewed each month had a nice, cold place to live without preventing me from storing perishables. One afternoon, after a long day at work, I walked out to the garage to grab a chilly one. When I placed my hand upon the doorknob, I noticed something sticky, which reflect a bit of sunlight. My eyes moved up until I noticed that I was staring at grayish blob, somewhere between the size of a silver half-dollar and dollar, and about 6 inches from my face. I knew right away that it was a spider(middle of the web and all), but I wasn't certain if it was still alive or was simply a clinging, crumpled legs corpse. So I grabbed a stick and took a swing at the thing. My aim was a bit off, what with my being in shock and all, but I noticed that the form shrunk in on itself a bit. Great; it's alive. So I swung again. Must have gotten a bit closer because the fun began in earnest.

The spider extended its legs ::SPLANG:: and started making for the top of the garage. I hesitated for a split second due to two things:

1) The thing was freaking enormous. It's splayed legs covered an area greater than that of my hands with all fingers fully extended. And

2) The knowledge that another 1/8 of a step would have placed that bad boy squarely on my kisser.

Fear is a great motivator, but so is good beer. If I didn't somehow kill that mutant extra from Kingdom of the Spiders, I would be unable to enter my garage until winter. Being cocooned as an after dinner snack just doesn't appeal to me. Anyway, I swung one last time at the swiftly vanishing creature, applying extra force due to my thirst. The vile beast exploded into pieces, which thankfully landed nowhere near me.

Here's the kicker: my best friend was living in my house at the time. When I mentioned my arachnoid encounter, he replied, "Yeah, that thing was huge. I had to duck really low to get into the garage."

"WTF?! Why didn't you tell me about it? What would you have said if I told you the spider had jumped onto my face?"

"I'd have said, 'Gee, that's too bad'."

Yeah, I love the bastard, too.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 09:12 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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