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August 11, 2004

SPIDERAMA

The lights were all out, except for the faint glow of the kitchen striplight throwing a yellow flush on the lounge doorway. I was the only one in the house, it was approaching midnight and I was lying relaxed on the sofa, watching a suspense thriller on television.

Suspense thrillers in the dark, at midnight, whilst alone in the house are perhaps not the best idea if you get a bit jumpy. Naturally I had assumed that this childish reaction to such movies had long passed me by. I assumed wrong.

Living in a secluded area, there was no outside noise and nothing to momentarily take my mind from the chilling storyline of the movie. It was a particularly tense moment, the accompanying music making the murderous scenes far more dramatic and the impending gore surely only seconds away.

And then, casting a shadow against the yellow light being projected from the kitchen was a huge black lump, dashing swiftly across the floor, scurrying across our straw-like carpet before freezing where it stood, assessing it's position and seeking out any potential threats before hurrying to the lounge door and sticking itself right next to the bottom of my dressing gown which was hanging on the back of the door.

Quickly as I could, but careful not to frighten the lump into taking cover in the safe refuge of my warm dressing gown, I rose and considered my options. Creeping as softly as possible, I switched on the main light and stood perfectly still in the hope that the lump would stay where it was. It was only then that I saw the enormity of what was there, clinging to the wooden door. A huge, dark coloured spider whose body alone was the size of your thumb knuckle to the tip of your thumbnail. It's eight legs covered a massive distance and I kid you not, it must have been six inches across from leg to leg.

It was clearly too big to grab with a tissue, and besides I didn't want to let it out of my sight in case it scurried out of sight, forcing me to live in fear until our paths crossed again. Inspiration. I backed off, my eyes still focused on the largest arachnid I had ever seen. I plugged in the hoover, made sure the suction wouldn't ignite when I switched it on at the plug, removed the vaccum head to leave only the suction pipe and tip-toed back towards the doorway like a gunman stalking his target. Despite concentrating hard, I couldn't help but compare this to the time Mother was watching Arachnophobia when an enormous spider ran across the curtain, but I soon dispelled these thoughts and focused on the task at hand.

I hovered the pipe about an inch over the hairy body of the spider and kicked down on my Henry hoover's start button, the rapid intake of air surprising the arachnid and sucking it away from the door, forcing it down the tube with a sickening, whooshing 'foomp'. I dropped the hoover tube in fright and hid round the corner, looking at the hoover in case this huge hairy lump defied the powerful suction of Henry hoover and clambered out the end of the long plastic tube.

Fearing that somewhere deep in the hoover bag was an agitated spider still breathing and planning its escape once the hoover's power was switched off, I continued vaccuuming for another half-hour, hoping that all the dust, food crumbs and toe-nail cuttings would suffocate the wretched thing into a horrible death.

So far it seems to have worked, but putting on the dressing gown is always a fearful routine.....

Posted by jonola14 at August 11, 2004 11:08 AM