No good deed goes unpunished…
I was spending the weekend sans roommate, just me and the variety of furballs that call this place home when it happened… The dismal, cloudy sky and continuous rain seemed to set the perfect tone for the horrors that were awaiting me.
In an effort to straighten up my kitchen, I was making a quick trip outside to take some trash out. After tossing the items into the dumpster, I quickly made my way back up to my back patio, trying to dodge raindrops while keeping my balance as I ran up the hill that is my backyard. I was about a two feet away from the door, hand outstretched when I spotted it.
There on the door, just a few inches above the knob was the spider… It was probably about the size of my thumb, with thick legs that clearly would give it the jumping power to launch onto my person at any second…
Now being a rational and reasonable person, I evaluated the situation… I rationalized that it was a reasonable outcome that if I attempted to proceed in opening the door, I could encounter a couple of scenarios… Either the spider would leap off onto my person waging its attack… OR the spider would drop to the floor once I opened the door and spend the rest of the afternoon terrorizing me from within the confines of my home… Neither of these were acceptable conclusions for me, so standing there on the patio, in the rain, I began to strategize.
Since the roommate wouldn’t be home for hours, waiting out in the rain was not the most practical solution. The front door was locked and I was without my keys. Being resourceful, I glanced around the patio to see what I might use to assist me. The spider continued to hold her own, sitting on the door mocking me.
I spotted the garden hose laying over to the side… I stepped over and picked it up (inspecting it for any of the evil spider’s henchmen) and then quickly turned on the water supply. I stepped back onto the patio and as my eyes reached the door, I was startled at the absence of the spider… I began scanning the entire door and the surfaces around the door, looking to see where the spider might have crawled off too… no luck… In an instant I shivered and jumped, searching my own person for this crazed arachnid… thinking briefly that maybe when I turned to pick up my weapon, the spider had seized the opportunity to attack…
Finally, I spotted the cunning creature… who had crawled and was hiding directly behind the doorknob… clearly it had been planning a sneak attack and intended to lure my hand to the door where it would then pounce onto my hand and scamper up my arm, so it could get in my face, posturing in all of its horrific spider’ness…
I quickly sprung into action, spraying the door with a forceful blast of water… I watched the spider fall to the base of the door, tightly balled up… After another moment, I stopped and set the hose down. I turned back to the door and as I looked down, there… in the puddle of water, I began to see the legs of this spider move… Giving little thought to the cars driving past, who had to find the image of a woman standing in the rain frantically hosing down her door hysterical, I grabbed the hose again, and began spraying the bottom of the doorframe, strategically trying to scoot the spider-ball out of the door and away from my safe passage into the home. After what seemed like forever… I was able to successfully push the spider off and into the corner of the patio.
Without hesitation, I tossed the hose to the ground and turned off the water. I leaped to the door and glanced over to see the spider was once again unfurling itself and shaking off the water, but at least this time, it appeared to be heading away from the door… I opened the door, leaping across the doorway and quickly slammed the door as I slid across the kitchen floor (mental note, don’t run across a tile floor while wearing water-logged flip flops unless performing an impromptu skating maneuver is something you are ok with.
I retired to the living room… keenly aware of the foreboding feeling that while I had won this battle, there is a far larger war looming out there…. how great is a spider’s memory?
I dream of coming home to a house that is perfectly maintained with a minimal amount of effort on my part. Sadly, my reality is often far from this dream… Like most people can relate, my schedule is hectic. Despite my best efforts, neither the cats nor the dogs have been pulling their weight to keep the house in order. I will give the dogs some credit for attempting to keep the kitchen floor clean… but that is really where their contributions stop.
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