A Juicy Joust
A career of teaching may appear advantageous when summer rolls along. However, much to my surprise, my days are speckled with smatterings of spiders on my apartment walls. Earlier this week I mustered up the courage to mop up the leftovers of insects and spiders collecting under our cupboards. I suppose one living in a basement might suspect such a life, but when I leisurely turned the corner to prepare for a nice, refreshing shower, no preparation could have helped when I turned only to see an abnormally large arachnid.
My automatic, instinctive response was a mixture of cringing, screeching, and running for the nearest shoe. (Much to the surprise of my parents and siblings, knowing my childhood of begging others to rid rooms of the pests, I've become very apt at the art of squishing spiders.)
However, unlike the usual red spiders I've found in our apartment, this species was a little different. So accordingly, when I whacked it with my shoe, the spider exploded like a mini bomb. I've never seen so much juice come from such joust! Juice oosed down my sandal. Juice oosed down the wall. Juice oosed through the toilet paper. And juice contaminated our toilet water (if such a thing is possible).
I never liked spiders.
[Note: I don't know if these are the actual species of spiders. Because of the short few seconds before I smash the spiders, this is the closest I can come to to remembering what they looked like. However, after looking at several grotesque spiders online, I pray they weren't in reality the deadly brown recluse or hobo spiders.]