Thursday, March 26, 2009

Paul vs The Spider AND The Cockroach

Well, I had a horror movie moment of my own. Around 2am I woke up for a bathroom visit. All was well and good until I was washing my hands and a giant cockroach ran over my foot. I immediately rushed downstairs to get the fly spray and fix the problem. Of course, by the time I got back to the bathroom, giant cockroach had disappeared. I sprayed around the bathroom anyway.

I was about to head back downstairs to put the fly spray away when I noticed, latched to the window at the top of my steep spiral staircase, a GIANT spider. I just knew, now that the spider knew that I knew it was there, it would jump on my head if I walked past it. It's happened before. Back in the 1990s sometime, I stepped out onto the back porch to feed the cats and a Huntsman spider jumped off the roof and onto my shoulder. In the struggled that ensued, the bastard bit me. On the neck. I'd been told that Huntsman spiders were harmless, but since that day, I knew in my heart that Huntsman spiders just relished the chance to jump on your face. If they couldn't do that, the top of your head, your neck or your shoulder would do just fine.

Anyways, since I still had the fly spray in hand, I shot a load at this GIANT spider. It simply crawled across the wall. At that point, the giant cockroach made a reappearance, so I sprayed that some more and it ran across the floor, right off the landing, and fell to the floor below. At which point, the spider fell from the wall to one of the spiral staircase steps (couldn't see which one). In classic horror movie tradition, I was taking tentative steps down the staircase to locate the whereabouts of both creatures. As it happened, the spider was crawling up the underside of the staircase railing. I shrieked like an idiot for a few seconds before spraying enough spray to kill an energetic pony. Spider dropped to the floor below.

SO, from the safety of the upstairs landing, I was trying to locate both creatures once again. I could see something down there thrashing about. I didn't know it was the cockroach until the spider started CRAWLING BACK UP THE WALL TO GET ME. Spiders like dark, dank places, right? So if it were on the verge of dying, it'd retreat to dark, dank place it felt comfortable, right? Exactly. Therefore, the only reason a spider sprayed with enough fly spray to genetically mutate future generations of children would crawl back up a wall in full light is to seek revenge on its destroyer, right? By that time I had a shoe, so after a couple on unsuccessful whacks, I finally won the battle. There was a loud PLOP as the giant spider fell to the floor below, defeated at last.

By that time, the cockroach was finally dead as well (God, at least I hope so). Of course, I shrieked and flailed about like a baby whenever I felt anything brush against me, even if it was the blanket I was sleeping in. But I fought a giant insect and a giant arachnid and was the last man standing. Even if all that fly spray might leave me growing an extra arm or something...

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