Reading With Scissors: The Spider's Tale

This is a true story and an old story. Those of you who are my Facebook friends, which I'm guessing is probably everyone reading this except the Russian spammers who pump up my page view count every day, may have read it already. It took place two years ago, but in the spirit of a really good Dateline episode, it has been re-enacted and now has pictures! Enjoy! --S.P. Sep 2012

The other night I pulled into the garage and started to be-bop into my house when I happened to look down and see a HUGE spider between me and my back door.

I jumped back toward my car. The spider was big, black, as big as a cotton ball---and it wasn’t moving.

My first thought was to call for Captain America. Wasn’t it he who promised 26 years ago to love, honor, obey, take out the trash, and kill spiders and bugs? But as usual when the trash was full or giant arachnids stood in my way, he was at 35,000 feet.

OK, I thought, I’ll step on it. I looked down at my shoes. I was wearing very flimsy sandals. I started to imagine drawing close to the spider and having it jump up onto my shoe and then up my leg. I let out a slight scream at the thought. No, stepping on it wouldn’t work. I needed something bigger.

I know, I thought. I’ll run over it with my car. I LOVE my Prius and it loves me back. It reads out directions when I’m trying to find my way, it shows me what’s behind me when I back up, it won’t let me lock the keys in the car, it gets 48 miles per gallon. Now, I thought, it will come to my rescue and kill the giant spider that won’t let me in my house.

I jumped back into the Prius and started it up. I backed it up just a couple of feet, cranked the steering as far to the right as I could and then creeped forward. I pumped the brakes as I tried to get as close to the garage cabinets as I could without hitting them. Surely that spider is just an oily spot on the garage floor, I thought, as I backed the car up again, turned it off, and got out.

The spider, completely intact, looked back at me from the same place I left it. It hadn’t budged an inch.

Dang it!

Now I started to panic, because I was pretty sure I hadn’t put a key to the new house in my purse yet and the only way into the house was being guarded by that big, hairy spider.

I looked around for another weapon. On the other side of the garage I spotted a broom that the last owners had left. I grabbed it and turned back to the spider, who still hadn’t moved. I stood there for a minute to gather my courage and then jabbed at the spider with the broom. The spider jumped, finally aware that I had no good intentions toward it, and hunched down like a Duke guard in a full court press.

I took another deep breath, my heart pumping so hard my shirt was moving. I brought the broom back behind my head like a 7 iron, and with a great scream of “Get out of my garage!!”, I swung it down.

It was a direct hit and the spider went tumbling across the floor toward the garage door—SPEWING A MILLION SPIDER BABIES AS IT WENT!!!!!

The floor was swarming with the Mama spider and her progeny as I stood there in my very flimsy sandals.

I went completely ballistic, frantically sweeping at the babies who crawled into every nook and cranny of the garage and swatting at their mother, who spewed out another million spider babies every time I hit her.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, “How dare you get in my garage! Get out of my garage! Don’t you go behind that box! Get out of my garage!” all the time swinging the broom like a cross between a whirling dervish and Dick Van Dyke singing “Chim Chim Cheree” in Mary Poppins.

The baby spiders continued to elude,

but I finally swept Mama spider outside the garage door. I was so full of adrenaline and vengeance that I turned the broom flat and pounded her to a pulp, screaming at each smash, “Don’t…you…ever…come…into…my …garage…again!”

I turned back around to face the baby spiders, and while many of them still scurried here and there,

most of them had crawled back into the deep dark recesses of the garage, biding their time until they come out to avenge the awful circumstances of their birth and the terrible thing I did to their mother.