Rough Morning

You are never really ready for an encounter with a large spider, you know they are out there, you also know that there is always a possibility that said spider can find their way into your house, or car, or office etc.

Have you ever thought about what you would do?
Do you know what your post spider sighting reaction would be?

Would you calmly grab a shoe and kill it, or would you run into the next room, grab your phone, hop on the couch and call anyone you can think of that might be able to come take care of the arachnid for you…Just the word arachnid creeps me out.

Maybe you would take a more humanitarian approach…perhaps grabbing a duster, or swifter jet vac, or whatever, and gently encourage this overgrown Spawn of Satan out of the window, and back to its rightful home. The answer to this question has been playing in my subconscious all morning since “the Incident” ok let me back up.

I woke up this morning at 7:23; I always set my alarm clock to an odd time, never 7:00 o’clock or 7:30...more like 7:13 or 7:27 not sure why I do this, I always feel like my body wakes up better at an odd time, as if the time is sharper or something. I know that does not make any sense, it also has not consequence to the story I am telling you, but I thought you might like to know :)

So it’s 7:23 and I am woken up by the alarm on my iphone, I get up and drag myself to the bathroom, I remember the floor still being wet from the shower I took the night before, I did not go to sleep until about 2am so I was really really groggy, as I looked in the mirror, I remember how stuffy it felt in the bathroom. It felt damp, like a pile of clothes that you did not fully dry, but there was no foreshadowing of what was about to happen, no broken door handles or windows magically opened that you know you closed, it was a regular morning, or so i thought...

It smelled like a typical morning in our little box studio, but I still contemplated opening the window to get some fresh air in, and to air out the bathroom so that some of the moisture could go out...I used the bathroom, flushed the toilet, turned around and saw it...fixed in between the door and the wall, right in the corner, who at this point I am sure has been watching me this entire time, like in the movies, when the predator is watching its prey. I imagine him looking at me with a grey screen like glance, watching my every movement thinking "the bigger they are the harder they fall" Thinking "make one false move and i will kill you in your tracks"

Right there in the bathroom of this tiny studio apartment, in the eastern suburbs of Sydney Australia, I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in my natural born life!!

This spider was huge, like little baby jesus, football, you belong in a zoo huge
Like damn that's a big ass spider huge!


Ok well it was not that big, but it was about 10 times larger than any spider I have ever seen with my own eyes.

So let’s revert back to the question...the question is, how do you think you would react if you saw a huge spider? Well me, I froze right there in the bathroom trying hard not to actually look at this intruder, for like 20 seconds I just froze. The thing is (in my defence) I was still groggy, still had crust in my eyes and still was not seeing straight, so my first thought was that I was dreaming, I had to be, that 20 seconds was spent convincing myself that all of this was actually real. So after I gathered my thoughts and my courage I slipped out of the bathroom door and gently closed it.

So there you are...decision time, you know the spider has to die, you know you have to be the one to kill it, but every bone in your body does not want to go back in the bathroom. I looked over at Stephanie knocked out sleeping, glad that she did not go in the bathroom first this morning, because you, wherever in the world you were in that moment, would have heard the scream of a distressed American in Sydney. And that is just if I was at home, if I was not home at the time you might have seen a Gotham City like alert in the sky, a streaming light breaking the clouds in the shape of a slightly overweight African crusader with a beard!

Ok I’m whiling…back to the story.

So I am just sitting in the living room, pumping myself up like Eminem in 8 mile, rolling my shoulders, pumping my fist and shaking out my legs like the beginning of a championship heavyweight fight.

"you cant let that spider smell you fear I told myself"

"that spider will be afraid", I say.

That spider has to DIE!

Then like Uma Thurman in Kill bill, I slide into the bathroom, broom in hand like an official Hanzō blade, and get in position, I am eyeing my assailant careful not to make any sudden moves, sizing him up as if to say

"Surprise Bitch" I'm back with my Hanzo Sword. You did not even know they still made these huh..HA!

And then in a very AL pachino in Carlitos way....HERE COMES THE PAIN written all over my face way, I, with way more force than necessary, thrust my blade at the spider and land a direct hit. Just like that the threat was neutralized.

Chump...

So at that moment I hear something from the bedroom, a faint voice saying “is everything all right” and like any courageous boyfriend not wanting his damsel to worry I say “yup”

Now granted, I am standing in this bathroom literally shaking from all of the adrenaline, pumped up like a roman warrior celebrating his conquest, but all I could muster was a yup! lol…

The thing is, I don’t want her (and her active imagination to start going crazy) if I leave it to her, her brain will have her thinking that we are under attack like the spiders are soldiers and they are going to start invading the studio like the Germans invasion of Normandy, so as any caring mate would do I minimized the entire encounter.

Starting to wake up she says “what was that loud noise” at this point I was standing in the bedroom, broom in hand I said “oh nothing just a little spider I had to kill” she goes “oh” sits up and looks at me with the WTF face, looks me over from head to toe, and then with the wisdom of an old Indonesian medicine woman, she says as she drifts back to sleep,

"sometimes you have to put some drawls on your face and go in for the kill"

Crazy right…what’s that?….oh you want to know why I had drawls on my face.....lol

wellllll remember back when I was talking about going into the bathroom, while I was pumping myself up I starting thinking, what if this spider has moved? What if the spider has like super human strength or worse what if the spider can jump?

Remember I had just woken up, so at this point, all I had on was some basketball shorts. So I did what any sane solider does before he goes into battle, I put on my armor, my thought was if the spider moves I can stay in the game but if somehow it jumps on me or gets on my skin it’s a wrap for me.

So I put on some Sweat pants, a jacket and my hard bottoms (in case I had to step on this giant) even after adorning all of this, I still did not feel protected, I thought “I need to cover my face”...thing is we are not fully unpacked, and finding a scarf or a bandanna before this son of Lucifer had time to make any dangerous moves, or procreate, or morph into harry potter, or anything like that I had to kill it, and finding the correct head gear was not likely, but I did have some white briefs sitting on the couch that had just been laundered two days before. So I put them on my head...the part where my legs would go is covering my face from my nose down. I looked like a chemist with a ghetto hazmat suit on about to disarm a nuclear bomb....so now that my battle gear was complete...

I could step into my destiny as an American Spider Slayer in Sydney.

(I should have taken a picture)

All this may be comical now, but in the moment,

In the moment this was a very real, very troublesome, and very serious matter!