What Next?


Wherein Our Heroine Is Mildly Paranoid About Nature.
The Ten Plagues (or something like them) have been visiting our house lately - and I'm not sure what we did to deserve this.

Over the weekend, John lurched from his seat in the living room, exclaiming loudly. When I asked what was wrong, he responded with something I'm not sure anyone ever wants to hear. "Do spiders freak you out?"

"Err.... only if they're really, really big. Why?"

The fact that he didn't respond was not something I took as a good sign. Instead, he went outside on the deck (for which I was grateful. I'm not sure that a spider scaled to freak-factor was something I wanted to confront inside the house. I peered out to the deck, and sure enough, there was a gi-normous Wolf Spider, just hanging out on the side of the house - a momma with her egg sac. shudder...

Yes, I understand that Wolf Spiders are shy and that they eat bugs. No, I wouldn't kill it. Whatever. There's still something creepy that goes off in my hindbrain when I see an eight-legged beastie that big, that close.

John took pictures, but they're currently incarcerated in his camera, and I don't have the cable to get them out, so no photo (if you really want to see the thing - complete with John's watch next to it to provide a sense of scale - just ask nicely. I'll get the photos out when John comes home).

So, plague #1 - no flies or locusts, but spiders (yes, plural - remember the egg sac. She's going to be carrying her babies around with her in a bit...). If I were really stretching a point, I suppose I could observe that we had cicadas earlier this year, but I don't work for The Washington Post.

On to plague #2 - I was sitting at home yesterday, trying to make a cover-letter sound so incredibly compelling that the University of Maryland simply must hire me right now, when great booming was heard, the heavens opened and we got rain complete with HAIL. Again, not car-damaging, need-to-repair-the-siding, "Get the Bucket and make ice cream, Esther!" hail, but hail nonetheless. Upon his arrival home, John said the storm was pretty localized. Hmmm... What is it about our house?

Final plague: I went to the basement yesterday to feed the cats and the fish (and no, not the latter to the former). Part of the evening chore fun is to go into the cats' lavatory and scoop the litter boxes. Under the toilet lid was a small, sluggish tree frog, icy to the touch and probably too dry for his poor little amphibian system. How he got into the house (and how he escaped getting consumed by the feline contingent) is unknown. He seemed glad to be back in warm, humid air when we returned him to the great outdoors.

So, okay: these "plagues" of mine are pretty tame. But coming all within a few days of one another like that... I don't know.

I just know that If the stream out back starts to run red, I'm heading for the hills.
Posted: Thursday - July 08, 2004 at 07:55 AM         | |

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