BIG HAIRY THING

I was driving over to mama and daddy's house the other day to take them this for lunch.

a huge crockpot that was filled to the brim with beef stroganoff. not from a box, i might add. ten hours of home cooked goodness. i had it sitting on the floorboard of the passenger seat and during the 20 minute ride i had to kind of bend over and hold the lid on, so as to keep this goodness from spilling out onto my floormats. see, i had cooked this very same meal about a month or so ago, and on the ride there i didn't notice that it was making a puddle. that's because i was having a moment of road rage, i'm sure. and when that happens i don't notice much of anything except the person who is making my blood boil with their obvious lack of driving skills. so, when i finally made it to mama's house and went to get it out of the car, i saw that half the contents were no longer IN the crockpot, and therefore, someone would be getting a much smaller portion on their plate. unless they wanted to go scrape it off my floor mats. then they could have a little dirt with their stroganoff, and call it pepper. HA!

anyways...this time i didn't want to have to tell anyone that might be riding in my car anytime during the next week, that the fragrance they were smelling was "Eau de la stroganoff," so i bent over and made sure the lid stayed on.

it's hard to keep your car in between the lines when you are hunched over, holding the lid on a crockpot while driving 45 mph in traffic. it is even harder to do when you bend down and see movement on your windshield out of the corner of your eye. which is exactly what i saw. movement. and that movement was attached to something BIG and HAIRY. and it had 8 legs! and i am not the least bit ashamed to say that there was some high pitched screaming going on in my car.  because when i was able to stop at a light and focus...THIS is what i saw.

what? you don't see it? let me give you a couple of other views.

 

are you seeing this ginormous thing now? well, i saw it...and let's just say i was freaking out a little bit. okay, more than a little bit. i like watching spiders build their webs. i think they are fascinating creatures. but i don't want to give one a ride on my car. because i just knew that when i opened the door, that BIG HAIRY THING would be IN my car. with me. and that i can tell you would not end well.

so, i did what most anyone would do...i accelerated, hoping that the wind would be strong enough to blow him away. my hopes were dashed. that BIG HAIRY THING wrapped those 8 legs around the windshield wiper and hung on for dear life. i'm sure that people riding beside me thought i was having some kind of a stroke or something. there i was, bent over to the right, holding on to that lid, driving with my left hand on the wheel, screaming at the top of my lungs, like a banshee (i'm sure i was in violation of the "loud noises coming from your car law") and weaving in and out of my lane. but no one cared enough to call the police, or an ambulance to check on me and see if i needed any help. (nice, people.) i made it to mama's house and before i could figure out just how i was going to get out of my car and walk around to the passenger side to open the door and get my beef stroganoff out, without this BIG HAIRY THING attacking me and jumping inside my car, my nephew, Ryan, drove up. i was saved! here was a 19 yr. old macho man. i would get HIM to remove the BIG HAIRY THING. and then i could go on. with lunch. with life.

i called out to him. "hey, Ryan, you aren't afraid of spiders, are you?"

"ummmmmm. no. not really. well, it depends. on what kind of spider it is."

"well, i don't know what kind it is, except it is a BIG HAIRY one, and it is on my windshield. and if you want to eat lunch, then you have to come and get him off."

and Ryan strolls over to the car, very nonchalantly, (after all, he's a macho man) with a McDonald's drink in one hand, and he's expecting to see something the size of a dime. he's sorta thinking that i'm exaggerating and he's going to have to be the big  man and come take care of this little nuisance for his BIG BABY AUNT.

and then he walks to the front of the car and sees it.

"Holy Cow...that is the biggest spider i've ever seen! what am i going to get him with? Oh man...that thing is huge!"

so i say, "just get a stick and knock him off." and i proceed to find one. but, when i went to hand it to him, he had walked off towards the garage and when he came back...THIS is what he had found to get the spider off my windshield.

a machete.

"NO, i screamed. you can't get him with that. you'll bust my windshield."

"well, i'm not using that little stick. i'll just try to brush him off with this."

and when he touched the BIG HAIRY THING it started uncurling those 8 legs and Ryan started backing away. and IT started walking towards us. and i was still screaming like a banshee.

yeah. you thought i was exaggerating too, didn't you?

not hardly.

THE BIG HAIRY THING ran down the side of my car and Ryan finally poked at it enough to make it jump to the ground and what happened next...well, i can't post a picture of it. it was too gruesome.

Ryan chopped that BIG HAIRY THING into a million little pieces. it was like he went into a frenzy. like something on a horror movie, where the guy has an axe and a victim and he just hacks and hacks and hacks. it was overkill, to put it mildly.

i said, "Ryan, i didn't want you to kill it. i just didn't want to have to give it a ride back to my house."

and he said, "well, i don't want it to get inside OUR house. that thing is HUGE."

aaaaah...big macho men. you gotta love em.

 (but Ryan should have never let me know that he's afraid of spiders. i see some practical jokes in his future!)