Unique experience this morning. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes this morning was movement. On the wall, about 2 feet above my toes, was a largish fluttering thing. My first thought was- "That looks like a huge spider about to land on my foot." And by huge I mean, the size of my entire hand. After blinking a couple times and letting my eyes come into focus, I found that it was that, indeed. The largest camel spider I have ever seen was dangling from my internet cable, right over the foot of my bed. I thought about turning on the light, but they hate light, and I was afraid of where it might decide to run. My next thought was to find a gun, but the thing closest to hand was bottled water. I chucked this at the wall and leapt from my bed (5 feet from the floor) without looking at the outcome, because even half asleep i could remember that these things run faster than I do. I'm assuming I missed it because I was never able to find the body. There was a gap in the plywood walls very close to where it was hanging. Presumaby it escaped through that. The rest of the morning I dreamed of killing a steady stream of nasty spiders that dropped one after another through the ceiling.
The image below is a picture of the standard Iraqi solpugid, or camel-spider. They have 10 legs and huge crushing jaws, known to eat lizards and rats, and probably infants. Mine was dark brown are fury, like a tarantula from hell- but bigger and faster. Pretty frikkin sweet, eh?
