Last night I almost died. It was a horrible experience that will stay with me the rest of my life. It was a little after midnight when I saw a huge tarantula at the foot of our bed – it was the size of a man’s fist. The first thing that came to mind was to get Connie away from the dangerous creature as quickly as possible. I didn’t want her to panic so I quickly woke her and scooted her away from the danger that was closer to her than she realized. Connie, startled by the news she awoke to, stumbled in the darkness to our living room while I blocked her view from the spider. I was just hoping we hadn’t spooked the beast away from the area where I saw it. The thought of having to search for this dangerous animal in our bedroom would be mortifying, especially if I couldn’t find it. Arming myself with the only thing I can find under our sink, a can of wasp spray, I ran back to the bedroom and just kept spraying the creature that remained curled up in the same spot. I then discovered I had just killed a rogue brown sock.
It turned out that I was only dreaming when I saw the tarantula. In my waking, I kicked into protect and destroy mode and never bothered to check my assumptions. Unfortunately, I stayed up all night – shifting between moments of embarrassment and wondering if there was a real tarantula that ran away. Connie laughed herself to sleep and remains entertained at my mistake.
PS – I would have included a picture of the sock but it smells of wasp spray and had to be destroyed.
Ok..so this post snapped me out of my Saturday morning half sleep, half awake state. It was riveting while also frightening. Not being an arachnid connoisseur, I even interupted my reading of this post to do a quick study on this carniverous, furry eight legged behemoth. I found that while florida may have many native spiders, that the tarantula (Aphonopelma sp.) isn’t one of them. I discovered many other tarantula factoids as well. Armed with my new found knowlege I was looking forward to informing, maybe comforting the author with facts like: the probability of this happening again would be small, its bite is no stronger than that of a honey bee to a human and that they are slow (non-jumping) arachnids. Then I read “The Rest Of The Story”… A sock! Really? Signed, also embarassed.
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I laughed till I cried and my belly was in pain for laughing so hard when I read this. Connie- don’t ever let him forget this!
Pastor David,
I just read this and I laughed so hard I cried. I would totally have done something like this myself. I had to share it with the family and they laughed too! It sounds so much like one of our stories.
We have a simular story but I’m not brave enough to post it.
Thanks so much for sharing, laughter is good for the soul!