derakh

Ground Zero
2010-06-18 07:01:43 (UTC)

One last story for tonight

Bugs- 10/21/08

I think I am not alone when I say that bugs and crawly
things freak me out, spiders especially. I flat out hate
spiders. I go insane when I encounter one. I lose all
rational thought and scream like a horror film victim. Other
critters like centipedes, bees and gnats irritate me and
cause me to act a bit of a fool, but I am still sane during
the ordeal, at least.
The irony about my total detest of arachnids is that my
mother loves them. When I was in high school, she refused to
get her house sprayed for spiders, so in turn there was
about five hundred million of them around. We had all kinds
--everyone from Mr. Daddy-Long-Leg to the mistress of evil
the Black Widow --were sharing our house. It seemed they
were all aware of the fact that I wanted nothing to do with
them and they flocked to me. I had them sneaking up on me
constantly. If it wasn't a daddy long leg scurrying along
the wall in the shower, it was the wolf spider creeping up
the wall next to me. It never ended. They even crawled in
bed with me. I would awake to the feeling of something
crawling up my leg under the covers. Nothing will make you
fly out of bed faster than spindly legs moving up your
thigh. It was like forcing an agoraphobic to run naked
through the Superbowl half-time show.
My mother claims, and I think she is somewhat correct in
this, that I see things in regards to spiders a bit out of
proportion compared to everyone else. Where she sees a
spider the size of a ball of belly button lint, I see
Godzilla. The way I see it, spiders will bring about the end
of the world, one screech at a time. They are pure evil.
Now that I am older, I tend to not freak out quite so much.
I used to scream for my dad, now I calmly go find my cat.
The cat and I have this little deal worked out. I show him
the scurrying critters and he attacks and eats them. Its win
win. I think he enjoys the partnership in a more hunter-like
sense than I do, but I do get a sort of sick satisfaction
out of watching him toy with the spiders before he
ultimately devours them. I find it highly amusing to watch
him jam his paw down on them and pin them to the floor
repeatedly. I love my cat.
I think the very peak of my spazziness with spiders
happened when I was about sixteen. My parents house was a
large four bedroom, one of which was used as a computer
room. We had everyone's computer crammed in there so we
could all sit in the same room and ignore each other. There
was no animosity about it, but when you are on your own
computer, you tend to zone out everything else going on
around you. I was minding my own business playing some video
game in my jammies and socks. At the time, only my mother
and I were in the room. My dad and brother had gone into the
living room to watch television. I was so intent on my game
that I wasn't looking around the room at all. Its the same
kind of coma that the television induces in suburban homes
across America everyday.
Out of the corner of my eye I notice movement on the wall a
few inches away from me. I glanced over and realized that
the most enormous wolf spider I had ever seen was perched
directly eye level with me. It took several seconds for it
to register in my brain that this monstrosity was
eye-ballin' me. It essentially broke my sanity. I howled and
leaped up from my office chair, causing the chair to fly
across the room and bounce off the wall. I blindly tore out
of the room. Stampede of one. The computer room was
carpeted. The dining room and kitchen, however, were not.
When my socks met with the hardwood flooring, my feet flew
out from under me and I slid across the floor and under the
kitchen table.
I think the impact must have startled me more than the
spider did, because I stopped hollering and just kind of
laid there looking at the underside of the table. My father
and brother heard all the commotion and rushed in from the
living room to find me laying on my back under the kitchen
table, mumbling unintelligibly. When they asked what was
wrong, all I could do was point. My mother was startled by
my blind terror but was sitting in the computer room
laughing. She had seen the spider long before I had and had
been waiting to see how long it took me to notice the damn
thing.
My mother was always mean like that. She loved to freak me
out whenever possible. I made myself such an easy target
too. Shame on me for being relaxed and letting my guard down
when in the comfort and tyranny of my own home. When I was
twelve she was on a bead-work kick and somehow figured out
how to fashion the likeness of a spider out of small wire
and black beads. I was stretched out on the couch minding my
own business and watching TV when she came toward me with
her hands cupped like she was holding something. Without
warning she yells "Hey Nar! Catch!" and tosses what looks
like a tarantula at me. Before the spider even landed I had
leaped off the couch, over the coffee table and darted up
the stairs. She laughed so hard she cried. God damn you
woman! I nearly pissed myself. Its no wonder that I am an
arachniphobic basket case considering how many realistic
plastic spiders my mom has chucked at me.
By the time I was seventeen, my dad had nearly talked me
down off of the proverbial ledge when it came to spiders. He
said if I was going to ever live on my own, there would be
spiders and I would need to handle them by myself.
"I won't be able to show up all the time and squash every
spider that wanders into your house" He said
Fine, fine. I started psyching myself out to deal with
spiders on my own. This usually entailed me hovering two
feet away from the spider with a shoe that belonged to
someone other than me. I would spend nearly an hour in same
cases trying to get enough courage to get the shoe close
enough to smash the spider. It seemed like they knew what I
was going to do and always darted up the wall whenever I
came in for the kill. I am convinced spiders are smarter
than the Discovery Channel says they are. Spiders are
plotting against me!
After trying for weeks to actually smash a spider and being
completely unsuccessful, my dad suggested that I just catch
it in a glass and dump it outside. After some consideration
I thought this might be a valid suggestion. Not long after,
a beastly wolf spider appeared on the wall behind my
computer. The little jerk was running up and down the wall
for several minutes freaking me out. My desk was open in the
back and I was worried he was going to crawl into the leg of
my jammies or something. Or worse, get into my hair and make
a nest. I went and got a nice tall glass and a piece of
printer paper.
It took me about thirty minutes to will myself to press the
glass against the wall over him. He didn't seem to dart
around like the others did. He just sat there on the wall,
coldly calculating my eventual demise. Finally, I just
jammed the glass down against the wall and hoped for the
best. Carefully I slipped the paper between the wall and the
glass and pulled the glass away from the wall.
"Yay!" My dad said. "Now take him outside and dump him out."
I marched out the sliding glass door to the large patio and
closed the screen door behind me. I was so elated that I had
actually caught him, I removed the paper and stood there
peering down into the glass at him. My happiness came to a
screaming halt when the little bastard leaped out of the
glass at my face.
I screeched as if I was in a slasher film, dropped the
glass, shattering it all over the patio and charged back to
the door. Forgetting that I had closed the screen, I crashed
headlong into it and fell through it on to the kitchen
floor. My family came running from all rooms to see why I
was screaming bloody murder. They found me lying on the
floor, tangled in what was left of the screen door, sobbing.
It only took a few seconds for my brother to burst into
laughter. Eventually I had my entire family standing around
me in stitches over the fact that I happened to capture the
one leaping wolf spider in existence. So that was the end of
my spider catching days. After that I started showing them
to my cats for their entertainment.
Spiders aren't the only creepy crawlys I have had horrific
run-ins with. I once nearly crashed my car when one of those
big fat, fuzzy bumble bees flew the driver's side window and
landed in my lap. I know they aren't hostile bees, but they
are still god damned scary being so big and buzzy. Not to
mention that I am fairly allergic to bee stings.
I was driving down a back country road, enjoying the summer
with my window down, when this bee flew in my window,
narrowly missing my face, bounced off my passenger side
window and landed in my lap. I was so startled by it that I
slammed on my brakes, forgetting to push the clutch in. My
truck came to a thunking halt diagonally across the two lane
road. I half jumped, half fell out of the door. Thankfully
there was no one around to witness my moron car move. The
bee quickly regained his orientation and flew out of my
truck to continue on his little bumble bee way like nothing
had happened. The combination of almost having a bee clip
the side of my face and nearly driving my truck into a ditch
gave me a pretty good fright. I had to lean against the side
of my truck for several minutes before I drove away again.
After that I kept my windows up and used the vent instead.
I wish all critters would just go away and mind their own
business. Recently while working the night shift at my
security job, I was chased by a House Centipede. These
little buggers are the devil. They share the same circle of
hell with spiders. Not only do they look like some monster
from a horror movie, they move extremely fast. When I say
fast I mean all you see is a streak across the floor. You
have to wait till they stop to actually see what the hell
they are.
It was not long after my father had passed away, I was
sitting in the quiet lobby contemplating how I could
possibly continue through life without my father in it. Just
as I was starting, yet again, to get upset over his sudden
death, the centipede charged at me from under a door near my
desk.
At first he looked like a ball of dog hair or lint. The
ventilation in the lobby was fairly strong and with all the
residents bringing their dogs in and out all day, there was
usually a light layer of dog hair around the concierge desk.
I noticed the movement out of the corner of my eye and
nearly leaped out of the chair when I saw a three inch bug
with long, creepy looking legs near my foot then rush toward
me. You have to see a picture of these monsters to
appreciate how scary they really are. I suggest googling
them, but be prepared for nightmares. They could easily be
the star of an alien space invasion movie.
The stone flooring in the lobby was a dark grey color, so
this centipede, being grey and brown, was nearly impossible
to see. I had to get out my flashlight to be able to follow
him. With floor being nearly the same color and the speed at
which he moved, he was just a blur. At the time I had no
idea what this hideous creature was. I guessed some sort of
centipede but I had only seen the long black ones that moved
very slowly. I had no idea there were more species. I
definitely didn't think that the other species would move at
the speed of light.
I hopped around the lobby for twenty minutes trying to step
on the little bastard. Each time I would get my foot close
to him, he would dart at my other foot, causing me to leap
from one foot to the other. I'm sure I looked like a lunatic
on the security cameras. They were good cameras. There was
no way they could pick up the three inch bug on a floor that
was nearly the same color as he was. All the cameras could
see was the crazy security guard shining her flashlight on
the floor and hopping around. How humiliating. Surprise!
You're on security camera!
I finally had to out-smart him. I used my left foot to
distract him, then mashed him with my right foot. I know
there are bug enthusiasts who will recoil in horror when
they read that I stomped on a defenseless centipede, but
they would have had to be here to understand. He was
aggressive! I tried to avoid him but he was chasing me, I
know it. I actually moved away from him a few times and he
followed me. Besides, there is no way I was going to allow
The Flash of the bug kingdom to have free reign of my lobby
with me still in it.
After I managed to make bug juice out of him, I got on the
office computer, which I wasn't supposed to use, and looked
up an image of him on google. At least now I had a name to
go with a diabolic face. I searched wikipedia for more
information on these House Centipedes. I was interested to
discover that this species of centipede originated in the
deserts of the Middle East. I wasn't surprised to see that
they had moved over to the United States considering all the
time we have been spending over in there recently. I also
found out that they move at a speed of sixteen inches per
second, they have excellent eye sight and are venomous. The
eyesight accounts for their aggression. Unfortunately their
venom is fairly mild for humans and small animals. If their
bite actually does penetrate the skin, its likely to only
cause an uncomfortable rash for a few hours. I was
disappointed to find out that they don't have flesh
dissolving saliva like a lot of their Middle Eastern
comrades. It would have made my heroic centipede slaying
story so much cooler. I also found out that they live
between four and seven years and are insectivores, which
means they only eat other critters. Apparently it is common
in their native homeland for humans to allow them to roam
their house as a form of pest control. That's great and all,
but I don't think I could tolerate the possibility of one of
them getting in bed with me if left to roam free.
The only other bug that I seem to have a constant problem
with is Gnats. I think they are also called fruit flies
sometimes. They are those tiny little flies that always
insist on flying around your eyes. My lobby at work seems to
be rampant with them. Its like a mass effort from the insect
kingdom to make me look like an idiot on camera. These gnats
spend the entire night buzzing around my face. They are so
small that not even people standing a few feet from me can
see them. I end up waving my arms around my face, looking
like I am having a seizure. I have seen so many of these
little flies that I have become Mr. Miyagi with my book. I
am so fast now that I can slam my book on them without even
losing my spot. Yes, I get bug guts on my pages sometimes
but its a small price to pay to not have to deal with the
little assholes trying to fly up my nose every five minutes.
Ironically, as I am writing this, there is a gnat buzzing
around my face. The fun never stops. Its like a covert
mission. I eliminate one, another one is sent in his place
to drive me closer to the edge of insanity. I am just
thankful the little gnats aren't scary too. I might have to
find myself a new job if that was the case.




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