Arachnophobia

I think wine makes me braver.

I got home at about 11:15 last night to find everyone asleep. Dave and Linda were in bed, and Kevin was resting under the bar stools in the kitchen.

What? That was an odd place for him to rest. He's typically perched on top of the couch keeping a keen eye on the street, ready to bark at anyone who dares walk past the house. I'd never seen him under the stools.

"Hey Kevin...aren't you even going to say hi?" 

Guess the honeymoon's over, I thought feeling melancholy.  (It was kind of like when the girls stopped wanting to hold my hand, or were embarrassed when I walked them into school.)  I poured myself a glass of wine and turned on the TV. Then I pulled him out from under the stool and brought him to the couch. "Want to hear about Hairspray?" I asked pathetically.

A couple minutes later I realized that he had returned to his spot under the bar stools.

"Come on, Kevin. Keep me company!"  I fluffed up a pillow and made myself comfortable on the couch.  Kevin didn't join me.

"Wait a minute. What are you doing under there?  Are you eating something?"  With great effort I pulled myself off the couch.

Did I ever mention how blind I am without reading glasses? Seriously, I have 20-20 vision unless something's six inches from my eyes. I pulled Kevin out from under the stools and saw something fuzzy.  It wasn't fuzzy because it was fuzzy. It was fuzzy because it was within six inches of my eyes.

So I touched it.

It didn't feel fuzzy.

My stomach turned.

With great anxiety I turned on the light and grabbed my reading glasses. And I also grabbed some toilet paper to pick up the insect (that I was suspected was sitting on the floor under the stool).

But it wasn't an insect. It was a zodiac sign. And a reptile..or maybe a mammal?

I've since found out that scorpions are actually arachnids.

And I didn't know what I was going to do with that particular arachnid on my kitchen floor. 

Of course my first priority was to take it's picture.

I quickly abandoned the toilet paper. It may have been my imagination, but the arachnid (let's call him Guido) was laughing at my toilet paper.

I thought about other ways of "getting rid of it."  For a nano-second I considered waking up Dave or Linda, but quickly dismissed the idea, for I would never have lived it down ("you wouldn't believe what a wimp Lou was").

Then I remembered Maureen and the dead squirrel in her living room (see Squirrel Envy post 2/4/11). How had my brave brother gotten it out of the house? In a dust pan.

A dust pan it was.

When I returned to the bar stool, Guido was attempting to make a get-away. And I believe Kevin was aiding and abetting his escape.

But was too fast for them.  I whisked Guido into the dust pan, extending my arm as far as it could possibly go saying, "Stand back, everyone....I've got a poisonous zodiac sign in this dust pan!"   Of course, nobody but Kevin was listening.

I released Guido into the overgrown jungle of my back yard. I told him to get the heck out of town and that I didn't want to see his cephalothorax in my house again.

Not everybody is happy about Guido's exile from Irmo.

Kevin misses his little buddy.

He really needs to get a life.