One of My Own Spider Stories

While living with McCoy, I had the experience of tending to his tarantulas.

He had a pink-toed tarantula of his own, quite cute actually, and a desert tarantula from his deceased father-in-law.

We fed them crickets. The gore of their feasting was legendary. The power of their jaws would spew guts inches up and down the sides of the tank. This gore had to be periodically cleaned.

Over the months I progressed form exiting the room to walking the individual tarantulas over my gloved hands. From there, I learned to appreciate the fuzziness of their hairy barbs on my bare hands.

One day as McCoy and Solaris were cleaning the pink-toed tarantula's cage as I held it, it became agitated. Perhaps because my hands were sweaty. It kept increasing speed as I, faster and faster, spun my hands as if preparing pizza dough. Finally the spider jumped.

I always knew spiders could jump, especially tarantulas. But, mercy! How far they can jump! McCoy was around four feet away, bent over the tank as it rested on the floor. When I yelled out in alarm, he looked up in time to see a pink-trimmed black hairy mass flinging itself at his face! It's front legs grabbed his nose, but lost their grip dropping the monster onto the floor. The damage was done. McCoy was peeling his lungs and dancing about like a girl who's seen a mouse. His horrific screams set his fiance and me into histaria all our own.

Meanwhile, the spider had made his way across the carpet and was making his way up the drapes! I threatened to expire if the spider made it's way to the strategic advantageous locale of the ceiling, and so, in a moment of brave brilliance, McCoy hefted the semi-clean tank toward the drapes and slapped the spider home.

We never cleaned the tanks the same way again. We bought a third tank. For prisoner transfer and holding.