The Tarantula

It appears I have no public record of this story, except for where I first published it as a serial on my old Xanga site. (Who remembers Xanga?) So, because I again find a reason to share the mirth, I'm posting it here.  It is an old story, but it is just as chilling today as it was in the weeks that I lived it! For the sake of goodwill towards all men, it will not be published with graphic photos. The photo below is as graphic as it will get.

We were living in Arizona.  I never wanted to live in Arizona.  The Army didn’t care.  The first military orders we got that year said we were going to Panama. Oh my!!  I heard the bugs there are REALLY big. I wasn't happy. I was never a fan of spiders. Ahh, how nice I made that sound. Instead I should say, I have an unreasonable fear. Call it arachnophobia, on steroids. I tried to imagine instead the glittering blue Caribbean waters, but I just couldn't get out of my mind the thought that large creatures would take residence on the underside of my car. Little did I know…

My car was a 1991 light blue Chevy Caprice station wagon. The car had been around the block a few times. We had 3 children by this time, all boys who loved the trundle seat in the back that let them watch where we'd been. They knew their Dad and I would take care of the "where we were going" part; it usually guaranteed high adventure and new horizons. Well, at least it usually included a new town with a new Taco Bell, and another chance to meet new friends. We just never imagined that some of the high adventure would include 8-legged "friends." So, it seems that in order to get me to be willing to go to AZ, God threw Panama in there for a while.

When the dust settled, the Panama plan dropped away and we were left with the American West. And I was grateful!  Imagine that; grateful to be moving the land of scorpions and rattle snakes. I had never been out there, having only ever explored as far to the left as Wyoming when I lived in Illinois as a child.  To me, it didn’t seem like the same thing at all…and I was right. 

I had somewhat of an idea what we were getting into. I’d seen westerns where they battled rattlesnakes, and various other varmints. What I hadn’t realized was that road runners were real. Meep, Meep!  I'd see them crossing the road at any given time. There was another highway on which I could count on seeing a coyote hanging around. I never did see one chasing the other though, and I never stopped to ask him if his name happened to be Wile E.

Our church building was relatively new. It was built on the edge of town. That meant, in essence, that it was also on the edge of the wild desert. One Wednesday evening I saw a deacon and the pastor headed out the side door of the church with a bucket and a rake; the next day I learned that a rattlesnake had visited on the sidewalk between the main building and the annex building! If that’s not bad enough, at night, you never knew if you were stepping on scorpians when you went out to your car. It really puzzled me when I would see kids barefoot at dusk outside the church.

So it was in the spring of 1998 I guess, well, it’s hard to tell since the weather was never unreasonably cold so it could have been any time of the year. At any rate, the temps were mild. The sun was out...ok, the sun was pretty much always out except during the monsoons in July.  Anna was a baby and the boys were all under 11.  I didn’t frequently get out of the house, but when I did head “to town,” I would combine several errands into one day. 

I’d packed up lunches, snacks, diaper bag, and changes of clothes for the youngest three. and water bottles. I’d pulled together activities to do in the car, which included school workbooks. I’d prepared lists, and gathered items to return, and items to consign at the post thrift shop. Who knows what else was on my agenda that day?  I just remember it being some very intense and thought-out preparation. The common questions preceded take-off: Does everyone have shoes on? Has everyone brushed their teeth? Does anyone have to go to the bathroom? Did the last one out of the house lock the door? Ok, everyone in the car and buckle up. Erik get Anna into her car seat. Ok, everyone in?

This is where the saga really begins. I threw my purse on the seat, and hopped in. I stuck the key in the ignition, and reached for the door to close it. My heart most certainly stopped. For, inside the car, on the door, right where the bottom front corner of the window is, was the biggest, hairiest, leggiest, spider I’ve ever seen!

My first reaction was to scream; I think I probably did! Then I hollered to the kids to get out of the car. It’s like it was a bomb or something. Looking back I knew it was irrational, but who is rational when you almost TOUCH a Tarantula? They all scrambled out. Erik grabbed Anna, and I looked for something, anything, to whack the intruder with. I finally found a stick or something, but by the time I got back to it, it had scurried down the hinged part of the doorway opening, and to my horror, I watched it crawl into the metal frame of the underside of the car! OH NO!!!!!! What in the world was I going to do now? I turned and looked at the kids. I turned back and looked at all the stuff I'd carefully packed into the car. I pondered my lists. There was no getting out of the appointment that was smack in the middle of my day. Buying a new car entered my mind, but that was out of the question. I HAD to get back into that car, or I’d be doomed to a life of walking forever. 

After contemplating things for a few minutes, I did the unthinkable. I decided to do my errands anyway.  I had the kids all get, on the opposite side of the car. Then, still standing far away from the car, I reached out my arm just enough to swing open the car door.  With a stride as long as I could muster, I put first one foot into the car, then hopped in with the rest of me. Slamming the door closed quickly behind me, I put my key in the ignition, and glanced over to the door and saw that nothing else lurked. I studied the dash, the steering wheel, and the visor just to be sure there was nothing there. By this time I was chastising myself for being so wimpy. I did the verbal recheck once again to be sure all four kids were buckled in, then I backed out of the driveway and headed off into the sunset. Human nature is resilient; I don’t even remember thinking about the intruder again that day. But the story does not end there; that varmint was not gone. He would return.

Days went by and life went back to normal until an evening a few days later. The boys played soccer on the military post teams. When you drive on a military installation, the speed limit is always strictly enforced, and always extremely slow! At the end of practice I was pulling out of the parking lot at dusk and assuming my lightning fast pace of 25 mph. I lifted the visor that I no longer needed since the sun had set while we were at the practice field. At that moment, my heart jumped, for there on the outside of windshield was my eight-legged nemesis. I gulped. I instinctively decided to gun the engine to get going fast enough for the resulting wind to blow him off the car. Then I remembered where I was. To tell you the truth, the rules person that I am, my fear of getting a speeding ticket on a military post is fiercer than my concern over a tarantula living in, or on my car. I figured, he’s on the outside and I’m on the inside, so I’ll be fine. Over the several blocks that I traveled until I reached home, the critter managed to walk up the windshield out of my site, presumably onto the top of my car. I was relieved to think he'd lifted off with a nice breeze onto the street. Regardless, when I got home, I still instructed everyone to get out on the passenger side; myself included. 

If only that day would have been the end.

One day I went to a friend's house. She was actually my local Creative Memories consultant. Erik and I went there to work on projects; Erik wanted to try it out with some of his pictures. I was there until after dark.  We loaded up the car with all the scrapbooking stuff, then headed off toward home. Saundra lives on the edge of the desert town, not far from our church. Not far, come to think of it, from my friend Lori’s house.

When I first met Lori, it was at my midwife’s appointment. She was a midwife’s apprentice. The day I met her she reached down into her tote bag to grab a pen and instead jumped and yelled. I looked up and she was holding her finger. It was turning red. A quick search of the bag yielded a huge scorpion. I’d only lived in that town for a month at this point, and I was scared!! “Those nasty things,” she said, “they are all over my house. Every morning I get up, grab my broom, and do a room to room scorpion inspection. I sweep them down off of the walls and squish them.  Then I can start my day. Sometimes I find them in my dishwasher, so I just run a hot cycle and kill ‘em.” 

Those aren’t the only varmints she dealt with on a daily basis. 

After I’d lived in Arizona a while, I would go over to Lori’s a lot. One day she told me that there was a family or Wolf spiders living under her front door sill. Every once in a while she would open the door to go out or get the mail, and there they would be hanging around together on the stoop! She said she was letting them stay there because they eat the scorpions!! From that day forward whenever I visited I would step really long from as far away as I could with first one foot then the other into the house. My eyes would never leave that sill until I was in with the door closed behind me. Then, until she got the ultrasonic bug scarer-awayer that they advertised on TV, I would check the walls for varmints before I could rest. She told me that during her morning scorpion inspections, she hardly found the critters anymore. After that I was more confident that scorpions would be kept at bay.  

No matter what, no matter where I was, there is one habit that was hard to break. Shaking my shoes.  Even today in the relatively varmint free northeast I find myself shaking my shoes to make sure nothing surly crawled inside. 

But I should get on with my story….since it only gets even more creepy……..

So, anyway, Erik and I were at the scrapbooking lady’s house on the edge of town. After dark it was finally time to head home. I was driving slowly out of her neighborhood, as was my habit since I lived on the mandatory slow speed-limit military post. Settled in for the drive and chatting with Erik about the day, I happened to notice movement out of the corner of my left eye. I glanced over, and to my shock, and horror, was an unwelcome passenger right where I had first seen him at least a week prior. He was inside the car, within inches of my hand. 

I went into a panic. I wanted to step on the brake and get out of the car, but I because of my state of mind, I couldn’t find the brake. I forgot where it was and gunned the gas instead. I was screaming, I’m sure, and using both feet at the same time trying to stop the car. You’d think I was about to die!!  Finally, I found the brake, and Erik and I both lurched as I hit it rather strongly. As I jerked my door open, I screamed at Erik to find something to hit it with. He jumped out and panicked as well since I forgot to put it in park and the car rolled forward a few feet. Finally, Erik’s running here and there trying to figure out how to help me, and I find my purse right next to me, and knock the intruder to the ground. Immediately I screamed at Erik to get back in the car…and hurry!! He jumped in, and barely had the door closed behind him, when I pretty much burned rubber out of there!!

If only that were the end of the story………..

I was so concerned that it might jump up back onto the underside of my car! I’d peeled out fast hoping to crush him! So, I’m beginning to recover. I take a few deep breaths, I check my speed, and I stop at a stop sign. The sun has long since set, and I no longer need the visor down. So, I reach up to put the visor into its storage position, and I want to throw up. My hand is assaulted by the touch of webs. All kinds of webs. They stretch from the rearview mirror, to the visor, to the dashboard!!! That’s when I really begin to hyperventilate! I barely remember turning first onto the access road, and then onto the highway. I don’t remember how I got there, and I don’t remember how I got home. The WHOLE TIME I was picturing baby Tarantulas hatching all over my car in the coming weeks or months.

Later that year we moved across the country in that car. Never again did I see an eight-legged invader inside it.  It was only after the first winter in Maine, however, that I was assured that if there ever was a chance, it was gone. It is way too cold in Maine for any Tarantula, and that is one reason I love the Northeast!!

The End. (Thank me for sparing you the story about the black widow infested storage shed that we loaded some of our belongings from and into our moving truck.)