And a Spider Shall Bring Me Back

Good lord, I'm lazy.

It's been awhile folks. Partially because I've been working on a long-form writing project (catch you up on that one later) and partly because I've been exceptionally lazy (don't have the energy to elaborate on that.)

I'm blogging today because of the creature that visited our house this morning. Our story needed to be shared in the blogosphere, mainly because it's a story that will creep out my sister Susan.

In the middle of the night, I woke up by the sound of coughing/quacking/choking. After I checked the house without finding the source, I stumbled back to the bedroom, not too terribly freaked out yet.

But then, our little tortoiseshell cat, Olivia, would not come into the bedroom. She stood in the doorway, staring at a corner of the ceiling over my pillow. Her freckly little fur-hackle mohawk started to rise and her tail got all puffy. Nothing was there.

Lingers was totally LOLing

(FYI - The Conjuring is opening in 2 days and the commercials have been freaking me out. I think Olivia must have known this. Obviously she was just messing with me.)

Eventually, I mustered the courage to get back in bed, (after 'accidentally' waking Seen up so he could bear witness if the ghosts killed me when I ran to the bathroom). Even with the bedside lamp on, I was plagued by banshees chasing me in my dreams.

Then, another round of coughing/quacking/choking cut through the darkness. This time it woke Seen too, scaring both of us out of bed at 4:37 a.m. I was in the living room checking on cats before I was really fully awake. Cats were all fine, even the little trickster Olivia.

Seen, wandering about in PJs and rubbing his sleepy eyes, thought the sound might be coming from the backyard. We're on the 2nd level of a duplex and our smaller patio faces the tree-lined backyard.

Because I just had to know what kind of monster was quack-choking in the backyard, I grabbed the big  flashlight and whipped open the back deck door, and then the screen door. Thank god I had turned the flashlight on, because...this spider was sitting in the middle of a huge effing web, in the middle of our patio, just outside the door, between the trees and our screen.

You try not to scream if you see this in the middle of the night.

This creature was smart enough not to attach her web to the screen. She anchored it on the bottom lip of the door frame and the eaves above the door, so the web stayed in the same spot, even when I pulled the screen door open, which I did before I even saw her.

She was at eye level, in the middle of a web that wasn't there last night. I screeched, shuddered, closed and locked both back doors. Because clearly she was big enough and smart enough to open the door if it wasn't locked.

Seen is scared of spiders. So I said "Honey, come here a minute!" and shined the flashlight through the door at the thing. That wasn't a nice thing to do. Seen's reaction? He said his amigdala has grown three sizes today. He also says he's never going on the back patio again. Ever.

Now, I'm usually pro-spider, but being sleepy and scared, I poked the tip of a wasp killer spray through the door and shot the poor thing.

It died, which actually made me sad when I woke up a little. Sorry 'lil spidey.

Aww... Poor little thing :(

OMG! NOT SO LITTLE! AAaaaaaEEEE!

After the sun came up, I put on some yellow, dish-washing gloves, grabbed an old plastic bread bag and picked up the dead GIANT spider like it was a mound of dog pooh. Then I ran, cringing and gagging to the trash bin in the front yard, shivering and spasming the whole time. I just knew that big, dead thing was still alive and wiggling around in there (it totally wasn't).


After I tossed it into the trash, I gave out one last big shudder, arms flailing and a loud "BLUUUUGGGHHH" which caused a friendly man driving by in a big white pick up to stop and lean out his window.

"Are you okay?" he was very concerned.

"Spider" I said and shrugged

He laughed and drove on.

Still don't know what the sound was. Current theories floating around: a duck or a dying squirrel or the neighborhood stray cat coughing up a hair-ball.