You think you know me? Tell me how I feel about any creature caught pushing the boundaries of quadrupedal status, and how they will receive an emphatic ‘eat dirt’ from me. Which is maybe not weird to anyone really, because most people hate bugs. I can’t live a life without pest control. Mornington has been a great move for me, but I do feel as though I’m being dogged by some kind of entomological mafia. Ever since we got to our new place, I’ve been stressed out.
As someone who champions the rights of animals (otherwise) I do sometimes feel guilty for feeding a crazy amount of high pressure canned sleep juice to a spider just hanging out.
‘They’re more scared of you!’ Brian yells, prepared to save a life armed with a drinking glass and a random catalogue. I need to find out how to permanently eradicate spiders in my Mornington house.
‘Then that’s an appropriate response,’ I reply, adding more fly-spray to my mental shopping list.
If you’ve ever known the horror of coming face to face with your worst nightmare, then you might understand why my entire body fills with utter dread at the sight of a spider:
Flashback to the first night I spent alone, unattended in our house, a parent and sister free event, the surest advancement into adulthood yet. I was fourteen and this newly acquired faith gave me bravado. I spent the first part of the evening sipping on some elegant cooking brandy (which later turned out to be non-alcoholic) and the second half of it begging my parents to come home.
They laughed, and I cried. Long story short, I’d been preparing to run the hot water out with a lovely long shower when I realised there was a brown piece of elastic dangling over my ear, pinched between my shower cap and my hair. I tugged on it and it resisted. In the next second of life, I swear mine flashed before my eyes, because I there, suspended between my fingers was the biggest huntsman spider you’ve ever seen.