I was completely captivated, like a deer in the headlights, my eyes never leaving the big, ugly, hairy spider that was sitting before me. It was my sister’s pet tarantula. It had deserted its cage and was moving from side to side, undulating evilly, its eyes all looking at me. I inched slowly back, then turned and ran, looking for something to catch it with.
I wasn’t a spider-lover and hated the fact hat my sister had bought one of the ugliest and hairiest spiders that I’d ever seen. I finally found a net in the garage, and raced back into the house. The spider was waiting for me on the steps. It had gotten halfway down and was making pretty good progress. I slammed the net down with a crack, but missed the spider. It skittered sideways and leaped down to the next step. I scrambled away and brought the net down again. The spider stopped short and the net came crashing down in front of it.
My mother yelled out from the bathroom where she was doing wash, “Stop jumping in the house.”
The prickly spider had gotten between me and the floor, and there was no way that I could get leverage with the net from up above the spider. I backed up and jumped, landing at the foot of the stairs. The spider was sitting motionless, its cold black little eyes contemplating me. I swung the net again, but missed as the spider skittered off the last step and onto the hall floor. I began slamming the net down wildly, hitting the floor all around me with the net. The spider was gone. I looked up and saw it skitter into the bathroom. I winced.
Several seconds later, there was an earsplitting shriek and my mother came out of the bathroom, waving her arms. The spider was not seen for several minutes. Finally, its head peeked out around the bathroom door. It skittered slowly and cautiously into the living room, and stopped in front of us. I slammed the net down. It landed directly on top of the spider which tried to leap out of the way.
My mother was completely hysterical, screaming for me to kill it.
“Squish it! Drown it! I don’t care. Just get it out of my house. I’m going to skin your sister alive for this!”
I ran into the kitchen, grabbed a cutting board, and ran back into the living room with it, and a colander that I found on the counter.
I slid the cutting board under the net as my mother let out a gasp of disgust. With a lightening fast movement, I removed the net and slammed the colander down over the entrapped spider.
Just then, my sister returned from wherever she had gone to. She unzippered her jacket and came into the living room.
“Mom, why is your colander on the fl…” She trailed off, seeing the look in my mother’s eyes.
“You will, right now,” my mother said, barely keeping herself under control, “get rid of that spider.”
“But mom,” my sister pleaded, going over to the colander. She removed it, and picked the hairy monstrosity up. stroking its big ugly head, “I can’t give him up.”
“Right now!”
“But.”
“I said now. Either you get rid of it, or I have your father kill it when he gets home.”
My sister sighed, still petting the tarantula, which was perched on her fingers. She nodded, and then went upstairs to put it back in its cage, which obviously hadn’t done its intended job.
Needless to say, my sister got rid of the spider, and replaced it with a lizard. It, like the spider, didn’t go over well with my mother. It too was gone within a few days, and my mother forbade my sister from getting any more pets.
After three months, my sister convinced my mother to let her have another pet. They agreed to go to the pet store together. They bought a cat, instead, from the barracuda faced sales person. It was much better than a spider, but I preferred the lizards.
