Battling Charlotte
August 9 2018
Yesterday I came home and went into my kitchen. Out of the corner of my eye I saw movement on my floor. I am afraid of rodents. I am a hysterical woman not just standing on a kitchen table screaming when I see a mouse, but running outside screaming - and I can't even run that well. Thankfully, it was not a mouse. It was a spider. Normally spiders don't bother me. I can ignore them, kill them, or take them outside and it's not a huge issue. I am known as the spider slayer. I have come to the rescue of many a child, woman, and man to get rid of these beneficial bug trappers. I could have my own show – Anna the Spider Slayer and it could also star Simon Baker and Sam and Dean. But this was a huge spider. Maybe not tarantula huge, but you can see by the picture that it's pretty big. It's the size of one of the floorboards. I measured the floorboard. It's 3.5 inches wide. That doesn't sound like much but go look at a ruler. I'll wait. Now you have an idea how big this thing is. This thing could have taken down a mouse. There are mammals smaller than this thing. This thing could have done push ups with a can of soup while smoking a cigarette. So what do you do with a giant spider that's just chillin’ on the kitchen floor like a member of a gang standing on the corner watching all the girls go by, and daring you to ask him to get off your car? Well, first you take a picture so that you have proof. Then you try and figure out how to get rid of it. Stepping on it is not an option. I was in bare feet and beside I didn't want spider guts with little legs sticking out, on the bottom of my shoe. I brought out the vacuum thinking I could suck it up, but then I realized that not only would it survive the vacuum like it was a ride at Disney Land, but it would then crawl its way out and HUNT ME DOWN. No one wants to be hunted down by a spider, especially one wearing a black jacket and sporting eight spider web wrists. Then I thought about the broom, but realized that it would just hide among the bristles like a Jungle Ninja. The flat mop was the answer. The flatness of the mop should kill it - right? The first swing I missed. So now I've got an angry spider wearing a black jacket and spider web wrists out to get me. Second swing I got it! And then I stood there, holding onto the mop, with a spider underneath. But was it dead? I couldn’t see. I am trapped, afraid to look to see if the spider is dead. If it isn’t then that thing could leap at my throat, wrap me in its web, and suck out all my blood until I die. I live alone. There is no one to check on me. Eventually they would find me on my kitchen floor, all the blood drained out of me and shrunken – finally successful at losing weight. While I consider the ramifications of this, I realize that I am by the sink. If I’m quick enough, I could stick the mop under the running tap and send the monster on a waterslide out to the ocean. I turn on the tap, and quickly pick up the mop. No skittering. Which means that spidey could be dead, squashed on the mop. Without looking because it could leap at my face, I plunge the mop under the running water. And then… IT COMES ALIVE. It crawls to the edge of the mop pad. This time it was fighting for its life, and shooting radioactive web strings at me from its spidey wrists. I grabbed the sprayer like a cowboy at a shootout at the O.K. Corral and aimed, drenching that thing in water. And it still lived! We battled as I chased it around the sink with my water gun. You would think that being smashed on the head and then drowned that it would die. But it was like Wile E. Coyote with an anvil on its head. Or Donald Trump with his lies and mistakes. No matter what it kept rising and surviving. I couldn’t give up. The stakes were too high to let this thing live. After all, it broke into my house. I had a right to protect myself. I did not need to be haunted by a gangster spider wondering when it was going to leap out at me. Finally, the thing curled up its legs and took that slide down the drain. I kept the water on for a while, afraid that it would resurrect itself again and climb back up the pipe. I'm just hoping that it doesn't have friends out to avenge it's death.
