Along Came a Spider - For Realz

A spider tried to eat me today.  True story.

I was sitting at my desk working and out of the corner of my eye I noticed movement near my desk lamp.  I looked up and just barely had time to register a small spider descending by web from the inside of the lampshade down to my desktop before the spider was suddenly gone.

Where had it gone?  Had I really seen a spider?  I leaned forward to investigate my lamp base when suddenly the unseen spider executed his well planned coup.  Suddenly moving out from behind the lamp base, my spider foe leered at me with his two front legs suspended in the air as though he was promising an attempt to pin me if I tried anything fishy.  His black eyes seemed to probe me and I could tell he was trying to calculate my next move.

Very quickly I surmised that my little foe had all the attributes of a hunter - powerful and long front legs, a large head with large eyes pointing directly forward, and strong looking jaws that would occasionally preen themselves together in anticipation of a meal.  Yes indeed.  If I had been 300 times smaller, this guy would have been extremely formidable.

We both waited, staring at each other.  Slowly and out of the spider's field of vision my hand groped for something to use as a weapon.  I couldn't break eye contact with my enemy - he counted on me making that type of careless mistake.  My hand grazed something smooth and glass-like and I realized I had touched a small saucer plate I had just eaten my breakfast off of.  I considered it and then dismissed it.  Even when my life is in peril I just can't seem to bring myself to sacrifice a good place setting.  So I called for Carmen.

I don't know if it was the panic in my voice or if she could hear the wonder and respect I had for my enemy in my tones, but she came quickly.  She asked unsanctimoniously, "What's up?"

"There's a spider."

A little more tension in her voice, "Where?"

"Here," my voice was hushed.  "Next to the lamp."  I broke my eye contact with the spider and turned to urge Carmen to come look.  No sense in only one person's life being in mortal peril.  If I have to go down, it's going to be a spectator sport.  By the time Carmen got to the desk and I turned my attention back to the spider, however, it was gone.

"Oh no!" I gasped.  Visions of marauding spiders assailing me as I slept in my bed assaulted my mind's eye.

"There," pointed Carmen.  "He's behind the lamp."  My opponent had taken refuge during my moment of carelessness.  This bolstered my confidence.

"Quick!"  I said.  "Find something to catch him with!"

"Catch him?  Don't you mean kill him?"

"He's just a little guy."  I tried to sound braver than I felt.  "And besides, he's very smart.  He keeps following me with his eyes and he seems to know that I'm trying to get him."

"Yes," Carmen conceded with sarcasm in her voice.  "We should not kill the smart spider who will probably find a way back inside the house after we put him out."

"I don't think I can kill him.  He's very quick!"  I recalled from a line in a movie that some spiders have such a heightened sense of awareness it borders on precognisance.

"Fine," said Carmen.  "I'll get something."

Carmen didn't sound convinced, like maybe she had just lost a little faith in my manly responsibility to kill home intruders.  As she ascended the stairs outside my office, I thought of calling after her to ask her which she would prefer; a spider repeat offender or the horror of a husband that was devoured by a half-inch spider.  I stayed quiet and instead decided that I would have to slay the intruder lest I violate the unspoken order of manhood.  I needed to restore confidence in my wife.  I needed to restore confidence in me.  I wondered briefly if some spiders could breath fire.

I turned away from my desk to search for something, anything, that could defeat my pint-sized harbinger of emasculation.  I dismissed my cell phone, my favorite book and my guitar before I settled on my weapon of choice.  A half empty box of checks.

I returned to the desk and positioned myself to be able to see clearly behind the lamp base without getting myself too close to the spider.  Besides the ability to seemingly read my mind (and possibly the ability to breath fire) I wondered what other powers this spider had.

I had the spider clearly in my site - he seemed to notice that I had spotted him because he began moving sideways along the lamp base away from me.  I took the opportunity to make my first strike.

I hurtled my equipped hand down upon my enemy with what would hopefully seem to him to be the force of a thousand hydrogen bombs.  I was half elated - I would be a hero soon!  They would sing songs about me for years to come!  I would mount my enemy's smooshed carcass on the front lawn as a warning to all other intruders!

Suddenly and without warning, the climate of the battle was forever changed.  The spider could jump.

Before I could understand how it had happened the spider lept from the base of the lamp to the neck of the lamp in near-teleportation speed.  It was an impossible jump.  It defied logic.  It defied physics.  In the time it took for me to only visually acknowledge it had even happened, the enemy had cleared the space of an entire football field.  To scale, of course.

Awe and respect came flooding into my mind, but was quickly replaced by the fear of loss of respect.  My manliness was about to be lost to an extremely small, but extremely agile enemy that I had clearly underestimated.  He was the Iraq to my George W. Bush.

I had to kill the spider before Carmen came back.  I couldn't swing too hard at the spider in his current position lest I knock the lamp to the floor and give the spider a chance at a clean getaway.  I tried to navigate my weapon directly above him but again he sensed my plan and leapt back to the base of the lamp and huddled against an oddly shaped corner that I could not easily swing into.  He had calculated and executed a perfect defense in the time it took me to recover from my swing.

Carmen's footsteps could be heard coming back down the stairs.  I had one last chance to dispatch my foe before Carmen realized my failure.  I moved my weapon quickly over the spider's location and brought it down before he had a chance to jump again.  I ground the box against the lamp base hoping the spider would panic and try to leave his defensive position only to be pinned and smashed against the franticly moving box.  Shivers of repulsion ran through me as I realized exactly how close my hand was to the incredible jumping spider of death.  Surely he was dead by now.  Carmen came back into the office as I pulled my weapon away from the lamp base.

"Did you kill him?"  Carmen asked without a hint of expectation in her voice.  In the time it took for her to ascend and descend the stairs she had already prepared herself to no longer see me as a man.  I would be pissing sitting down before long.

I withdrew the box from the lamp and looked.  He was still alive, huddled in his corner.  I made one last effort to regain some stature.  "He's amazing!  He jumps really fast!"

"Oh!  Ewe!  No, he can not stay in the house!"  She handed me a small glass container and a plastic lid.  "Both of you are staying in here until the spider's either caught or dead."

Sweet!  An ultimatum!  I had managed to deflect the possibility of emasculation with the sheer awesomeness of my opponent.  No one thought any less of Superman when Lex Luther tactlessly poisoned him with Kryptonite.  This was exactly the same thing.  As long as Superman ended up on top with Lex Luther back in jail, no one would comment on how a perfectly harmless rock had temporarily bested Superman.  They would be understanding and supportive and they would take back their jokes about calling Superman "Superwoman" from now on.

I felt better.  I took a deep breath and composed myself.  I looked down upon my enemy.  I slowly moved the glass container into position over the spider and brought it down against the lamp base.  There was a chance this could go all wrong; the glass container would not sit flush against the lamp base and the spider could still scurry to his left or right for an effectively creepy getaway.  However, after observing my enemy I felt I knew his tactics.  I jiggled the glass.

Sure enough!  The spider jumped.  Certainly he had seen this as his chance to attack his attacker!  He could see my hand through the glass container and yet he jumped straight for it!  Had my protective glass barrier not been there I would have most definitely been injected with some powerful venom which would have rendered me helpless while the spider enjoyed his Tyler smorgasbord.  But these events did not come to pass.  The spider's arrogance in his own magic powers caused his eventual capture.

The spider was released harmlessly outside.  He might return as a repeat offender or maybe we'll simply encounter each other outside on the porch sometime and we'll both laugh together about the time we nearly fought to the death.  Who knows?

There's a moral somewhere in all of this.  Maybe it's that man and insect were never really meant to live peacefully together.  Maybe it's that we should always be prepared to deal with things that unexpectedly intrude our homes.  Maybe it's that wives secretly pride their husbands for having the wherewithal to deal with miniature home intruders.  Maybe.  But isn't that why I bought a cat?