April 28, 2008

I've Got a Food Theme Going On

Who: Me. Wendy. Jackie. Emily. Pixie. Dudley. Oliver.
What: hanging out
When: a recent rainy and cool Saturday evening
Where: our screened porch
Why: because we can


When it rains, as it was that evening, suburban slugs occasionally slip in for a visit. Emily joyously appointed herself chief-in-charge of porch slug removal. Seems she has a karmic debt to repay due to slug abuse as a youngster. We are happy to indulge her. She busily relocated the few who popped by that evening.

I don't understand why someone who casually picks up slugs with her fingers and gently carries them in the palm of her hand while singing happily can turn into a quivering mass of fear when it comes to other icky buggy things. Like spiders.

See all hell broke loose when, while on slug patrol, Emily spied The Spider. I slouched in my chair and acted disinterested. Soon Jackie and Wendy had joined her in prancing anxiously around the general vicinity of the The Spider, who by then was defiantly crouched in the corner under the bright beam of a flashlight. They all called for me to GET UP! and LOOK! at the SIZE! of this SPIDER!!!

Nope, no way. I wasn't going to get dragged into that spider adventure. He was all the way across the porch from where I sat. I had no interest whatsoever in that spider.

Cameras appeared. Pictures were taken. Oh wait! Something for scale! A Bic was tossed into the corner amid renewed girlie screeches and prancing. More pictures were taken. Still I sat relaxed in my chair. That spider had nothing to do with me. I was Zen.

My eyebrow quirked when Oliver got involved. As the weather has warmed, Oliver has become a regular occupant of our porch. He likes it out there. I've seen him chase crawling things. He eats them.

Oh what a deadly game was set into motion that night. The Spider was doomed to be an Ollie snack. I leaped out of my chair in horror as the others cringed and groaned and cheered. Oliver batted, snatched, crunched, swallowed then licked his lips as he sauntered away.

I looked at the pictures later.
It really was a big spider.

.

9 comments:

SassyFemme said...

Ewwww! Toss me a shoe and I kill the suckers. No, wait, toss Fran a shoe and she kills them, spiders creep me out too much. No relocating around here for spiders, they get in where they shouldn't be, they suffer the consequences.

Landlady of Fat said...

ROFL...

I love the way you wrote:

"They all called for me to GET UP! and LOOK! at the SIZE! of this SPIDER!!!"

ROFL!

Cedar said...

I would have screamed like a giant girl and ran.

weese said...

he ate it.
really.
wow.

Middle Girl said...

Pete is constantly chasing something. I have yet to see any actual prey.

I was Zen. hehehehe

Martin said...

We TOLD you it was big! I'm so glad you realize his former enormity.

My baby sure did nom him up :)

nina michelle said...

it's the circle of life...

agoodlistener said...

I can't throw shoes at your brick house (stones at your glass one, either). I just killed a giant bee of some sort that became enamored of my deck furniture the other day.

Olive Chancellor said...

Yikes. I live in Germantown (Darnestown, really) and saw something about as big at the edge of my garage the other night. I've lived around here for a long time and I've never seen spiders this big. Something is afoot.