spider story

[A. Vulgarweed]

Iggy, thank you SO MUCH for the information about brown recluse venom being
NECROTIC. I will sleep SO much better, thank you. :P

My spider story:
Last day of my first year of college, in upstate New York, and my parents
were on their way to get me. I didn't want to leave, didn't want to go
home, wasn't packed, and had a horrific hangover (not just alcohol). All I
wanted was a shower, so I padded down the hallway of our weird little
wooden-cabin experimental-dorm-things and into the shower room, which was
kind of like a rustic cabana. Just as I'm about to step in, I look down and
what is sitting on the drain but this humongous spider, with its legs all
spread out. It was *much* bigger than my hand. It wasn't fat like a
tarantula, but it was, if anything, even bigger than one. It was built like
a wolf spider (my least favorite kind), all alert and pointy and
mean-looking. I SHRIEKED, and the maid came running. I stood there half in
and half out of my towel and gibbered inarticulately and pointed at that
EIGHT LEGGED FREAK. She just said something like--I think it was--'Oh,
nursery spider.' So she went and got the industrial vacuum cleaner and
sucked it right up with a loud THUP!!

I still couldn't deal with the shower. I barely made it to the toilet
before the dry-heaving started.

Nursery spider? Well of course. Eats babies, I'm sure.

However, I could never find anyone else who had seen anything like this or
had heard of it. I was sure _everyone_ I told this to thought that my
failure to 'just say no' most of that year was having...effects. I felt a
little bit crazy. Was even doubting my own reality. Until--14 years later,
I was meeting my aunt for a family reunion at Baltimore-Washington airport,
and her flight was late and the info was wrong, and right behind the
information desk they had this display of mounted dead wildlife of various
sorts--mammals, fish, birds. Local species? Endangered? Didn't get the
theme. And there, in that glass case, was a **spider** _just like the one I
had seen_. Every bit as big and ugly as I remembered--the legspan was a
good eight inches. Go to BWI and look if you don't believe me--it's
*there,* or at least it was the summer of 2000.

I think I feel _worse_ knowing they really exist.

AV