The Incident

Some of my friends believe that my disdain for nature is excessive and unwarranted. To them I say, remember the hellish camping trip I once participated in during a New Zealand winter? And the time I was in Jamaica and a cockroach flew into my hair? Actually, all kinds of bugs can smell my cowardice, and I will relate a chilling tale to prove it.

One evening last week Anne Marie and I were walking up to our apartment and encountered, one by one, five large black spiders staked out at various points on the sidewalk. We have the same level of regard for spiders as adolescents have for opera, but our courage failed us before we could stomp all of them. We left three alive and took sanctuary in the apartment. I made a free and spontaneous decision not to go the gym after all, because I am a 23-year-old woman whose avoidance of nature is greater than her level of self-respect. In an attempt to discuss the situation calmly, Anne Marie and I reasoned that the warm day must have brought all the spiders out.  North Carolina weather has all the consistency of a desperate presidential candidate.

In any case, it wasn't long before the third spider ventured inside and sat in the middle of our living room. Understand that these are no dainty, elegant creatures. These are the linebackers of North Carolina spiders, big and tenacious. They look like Shelob from Lord of the Rings, only more intimidating. I said a really bad word and then stepped on it. While I waited for my heart rate to fall from the upper thousands, Anne Marie made a critical decision.

"Let's go get some bug-killer," she said. It was after 9 pm, so we drove to the Walmart and bought a spray nozzle and a bottle of Raid the size of a keg. This thing means business. It runs on batteries. Back in the apartment, we found the fourth spider in a corner of what would be the dining room if we weren't too cheap to buy a table and chairs. This one actually began running toward me, and I said another bad word and stomped him too, then doused the apartment in enough poison to wipe out the Everglades.

It was an hour later by the time the fifth spider made his entrance. He paused on the doorframe for half a minute and then decided the smell of arachnid napalm was too much for him, and left again. Reassuring, yes, I was just so not about to let him lurk out there. Not when I had on my hiking boots and carried a chemical weapon. So we ventured out.

There is a dark corner directly opposite our front door, where our neighbor's storage closet is. (My brother Nathan asked me once, with polite curiosity, if I ever worried that someone might be hiding there to kill me. "No," I said, "but I will now. Thank you.") Anne Marie found a bunch of spiders in that corner, and I drenched the entire area with Raid. We both pretended to feel safe. And then we decided to sleep in the same bed.

Anne Marie called the apartment office the next day, and they promptly had an exterminator come and spray the sidewalk. They also sent a maintenance man to put so much weatherstripping on the bottom of the front door that I now need two hands and a shoulder to open it. Occasionally I even consider bracing my foot against the wall, which should give you an idea of how seldom I do go to the gym, spiders or not.