Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Wild life.

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?




3 comments:

Nemesis said...

I'm pausing through the gagging and shuddering to ask: "If it has 10 legs is it really a spider?"

Dave said...

No, it is not really an arachnid. It's a cousin (or maybe a bastard red-headed stepchild) called a solpugid.

Anonymous said...

Wow! My post got erased somehow. Anyway, that sucker could have my room and everything in it! I'm not sure I'd even go back for my wallet! Girls, you should forward your readers to this spot so they can all feel grateful to not be in Afganistan. And we thought the soliders were just fighting bad guys!

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