I am currently sporting two spider bites. One’s on my right ankle and gets little notice, but the other bite is in the bend of my right arm. I think the lady at the post office today thought I might be a heroin user. She certainly asked me a bunch of suspicious sounding questions about the package I was mailing: “Does this parcel contain anything fragile, liquid, perishable, or potentially hazardous, including lithium batteries and perfume?”
Okay, so they ask that about every package mailed in the U.S. these days, still I thought she might be looking at me with an odd mix of pity and fear, thinking, “Poor old biddy, hope she doesn’t rob me for drug money.”
And while I have but the two bites, poor Studly Doright has six: five on his stomach and two on his arm. Everywhere he goes he wafts the scent of calamine lotion. It’s not sexy.
We figure we must’ve been bitten while working in the yard on Monday. Neither of us took precautions against spider bites, such as wearing double thick armor and sealing up any chinks in the metal with a combination of duct tape and bailing wire. Indeed, we worked bare armed with loose clothing just begging for a spider to come inside. We tempted fate and fate won.
Now, though, I’m convinced that our home is infested with the little critters. I’ve sprayed every nook and cranny with the scent of peppermint, and I dressed for bed last night in long johns and a hoodie.
Seriously, I had a horrifying experience with a spider when we lived in Kansas. I dreamt that I was eating a salad. The lettuce was crisp and crunchy. When my alarm went off I could still hear the crunching of the lettuce, but it was coming from inside my head. I thought, “oh hell, I’ve lost my mind!”
I began tossing my head and slapping at my ears as I stumbled to the bathroom. Miraculously, the crunching stopped, and I looked down to see a tiny spider on the bathroom floor. I killed him. No hesitation. The whole experience made me wonder if there are people sitting in insane asylums who just need their ears checked for spiders.
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