Spidey Senses
May 28, 2009
It was 1995 and I had been home from my mission for about three months. Summer had just begun and it was beginning to get hot in the South Bay. As I was in the mood for a drive in my shiny black Acura Integra, I decided to go someplace I’d never been before. Today I was going to drive Mt. Hamilton Road up toward Lick Observatory in the east foothills of San Jose.
The Diablo Range of mountains are pretty dry and are relatively (compared with the Santa Cruz mountains a little to the west) sparsely vegetated, resulting in a lot of dusty landscape.
As I was driving up Mt. Hamilton Road on this fine warm day, I came around an uphill curve to the left and was surprised to see all sorts of life moving across the road. I couldn’t believe my eyes as I came upon 20 to 30 different tarantulas running across the road, from right to left, as if it were some mass migration.
I drove through the herd and started thinking, “Man, I wonder if I can catch one of those suckers!”
I flipped a U-turn and headed back down the hill a little ways, driving in a manner that I hoped would not frighten the buggers. After I had passed by where the swarm was, I flipped another U-turn and pulled over to the side of the road.
Getting out of my car, I looked and spotted about five more of the beasts in the road. I grabbed a stick and proceeded in my quest to capture a tarantula.
The closest spider to me knew I was there. He stopped and performed the fastest 180 degree turn I’ve ever seen. He was looking right at me as I extended my stick toward him in a most non-threatening manner, I assure you. As I inched toward him with stick outstretched, he raised himself up and lifted his front two legs in an effort to frighten me a way. Yeah, I was frightened, though my curiosity outweighed my fear.
I backed up and thought to myself, “Self, if we’re going to catch this thing, we’re going to need some sort of container in which to put it.” Hmm, to the trunk of the car!
I popped the trunk and found virtually nothing in which I could keep the animal. In fact, the trunk was almost completely empty, only containing a set of scriptures in a black case.
“I wonder,” I wondered. Would it be possible to catch this thing in my scripture case? With a flash, I emptied the case of its contents and had the thing opened up and ready to do battle. Instantly, I had resumed the oustretching of the stick and the spider had resumed the whole “lifing up its front legs” thing. I approached it with the aforementioned stick in one hand and the open scripture case in the other, hoping that it wouldn’t bite too hard when my attempts at controlling it failed.
In one quick motion, I had it pinned to the ground (relatively gently) beneath the scripture case and was hastily closing the case around it.
I had done it.
For the longest time, I had forgotten about this story. As I started piecing together the remembrances of it, I realized that I’d never seen the spider again after that. I never did release it. I seem to recall overnighting it via FedEx to a friend of mine, Adam Jones, who was still a missionary back in Texas. I wonder if he ever received it.
Hmm.
Trekkin’
May 13, 2009
I went and saw Star Trek tonight. While I am certainly not considered a Star Trek fan, in general, I found the movie to be quite enjoyable and well done.
Roaches
May 11, 2009
I was tucking my beautiful daughter into her bed this evening when I felt something tickling the back of my neck. I kind of freaked out when it happened, thinking that it may have been a spider or something. It turned out, though, to be some piece of material from the little decorative bed drape for Betsy’s bed, and I had gotten all worked up about nothing.
It reminded me of some other event that still creeps me out, even after 15 years. This would be the time that I let out the most horrifyingly girly scream of my existence.
I was serving as a missionary on the island of Barbados in the Autumn/Winter of 1993-1994, and my missionary companion and I were living in the upstairs portion of a house in the capital city of Bridgetown.
One evening we were talking with Beverly, the owner of the house who happened to live downstairs. As we were talking on the rather dimly lit porch area outside her front door, I could see out of the corner of my eye that something was scurrying about in the darkness along the base of the wall.
Those sorts of things always made me uncomfortable, as if there was something watching me and waiting for just the right moment to attack.
Knowing that the cockroaches happened to be 2+ inches long and generally really disgusting made them just about the perfect thing for me to try to take out with a “best defense is a food offense” type of move. I mean, I’m so much bigger than them and I can certainly step on them, right?
Well, at least that was the plan.
I made my move toward the creature in what I perceived to be a lightning quick pounce, only to find that it wasn’t quick enough.
It had disappeared. Right into thin air. Gone.
A quick scan of my surroundings didn’t reveal its location, either. Only when my companion pointed to my shirt did I realize what had happened. It seemed that I had forgotten an interesting detail: Down there in Barbados the cockroaches can fly. Oh sure, it’s only for short distances, but they can fly.
This thing had landed on the front of my shirt and was scurrying about, heading for the opening in the front of my shirt, between the buttons and behind my tie.
My reaction was extreme. I started screaming like a pathetic little girl and began dancing about, swatting at this _THING_ crawling around on me.
I finally knocked it off my shirt and was able to escape to the relative safety of my upstairs living quarters.
To this day I am still grossed out to no end by little creepy things that crawl around all over the place.
Yuck.
