The Spider I ate.....

......almost!

This blog entry I dedicate to my oldest daughter Rachel, who I find glee in terrorizing and tormenting is terrified of spiders.  I don't know why or how she developed this tendency, as we never modeled this behavior at home during her growing up years.  Watching her in the presence of a spider is thoroughly comical and entertaining.  For us.  I do have the capacity to feel a small sympathy for her though, as I am the same way about snakes.

The near-eating of the spider in my home reminded me of an amusing movie I had seen about 20 years ago.  Wow, does time fly!  I saw the movie "Arachnophobia" shortly after it came out in 1990.

Starring Jeff Daniels and John Goodman, it is a comedy horror about a small American town whose residents are being bitten and killed, one by one, by a deadly strain of spiders.  Perhaps Rachel watched this movie in her formative years, I don't know.  She would have been about 10 or 11 when she saw it.  Maybe I'm a bad mother.  (I was allowed to watch "The Wizard of Oz" at a young age, and I had nightmares for years about that wicked witch of the west.)

Here's what happened in my home:  I was walking from my kitchen down our little hallway towards the living room, when, at the last moment, I skidded to a stop, realizing that a spider was hanging down right in front of my open mouth!  I almost ate that sucker!  

I backed up and took this picture.  (I held a paper behind it so you would be able to see it.)

I'm sure it's just a harmless little house spider, but I did think of Rachel, and knew that she would cringe at the thought of actually EATING a spider.  

Apparently, many people have phobias about spiders.  My niece Keturah recently posted on Facebook about a spider she found in her back yard, in some play equipment she has there for her kids.  Here is the spider she found:

She was asking her Facebook friends if anyone knew what kind of spider it was, and amazingly, in no time at all she got 36 responses.  Spiders apparently give many a strong visceral response!  I do not know what kind of spider that is, but I have seen them around, and if I recall they are fast and they jump.  I am faster though -----> I am THE ELIMINATOR.

Here's one last photo for Rachel to examine.  It's a flashback from Jamaica.  

I think these little guys are actually crab babies, but they look like fancy spiders.

These critters would be seen on the walls, on the sidewalks, anywhere.  And, sometimes there were literally hundreds of them fanning out in front of you on the sidewalk where you were trying to walk.  However, they were fast, so even if you were walking barefoot (imagine that Rachel!) you wouldn't step on them.  

"There was an old woman who swallowed a fly,

I don't know why she swallowed a fly,

Perhaps she'll die.

There was an old woman who swallowed a spider,

it wiggled and jiggled and tiggled in side her,

Perhaps she'll die....."

Folks - do you remember that song?

Rachel - do you?

I DO!