Have you ever encountered a spider in your home that made you want to sign over the mortgage to it and move immediately?
This one was close. I swear I turned around because I thought I heard footsteps, and there it was. It didn’t crawl. It didn’t skitter. Absolutely no scuttling. This behemoth sauntered like it owned the place (and nearly did).
I did like any normal person would do and practiced electron tunneling until I phased shifted about 20 feet away. This took approximately 0.000047 seconds. More impressively, I managed to recall the last decade of my life in perfect clarity, balance my checkbook mentally, and make a to-do list for the next 12 hours all at the same time without dropping my paintbrush. Time moves more slowly in the presence of 8-legged greatness it seems.
Fortuitously, I phased next to the refrigerator, so I was able to fix a drink (aka “liquid coping skills”) while drafting the title transfer in my head. After collecting myself, I approached the beast with a beverage offering. I’m pretty sure it was flossing the remains of the last homeowner out it’s teeth.
So I considered several more options: attempt to make conversation to see if it was friendly (the rearing of front appendages changed my mind pretty quickly), giving it a yellow pedicure (since I was still clutching the paintbrush), leaving immediately and not coming back for a few weeks (maybe it would finish painting for me, which would require me prying aforementioned brush out of my clenched fist), or taking a picture (before running from the house, of course).
I decided if I did try to take a picture and it grinned at me, I’d probably complete my psychotic break. So I settled on the other best alternative–shop vac. With the extension wand.
I’m now staring at the canister waiting for it to start rattling and jumping about. So far, so good. In a few weeks (when I’ve repressed the whole incident) I’ll put the bag in the trash. Or the whole shop vac.
Either way, I’m really just hoping it wasn’t advance reconnaissance.
