Full Disclosure: I fear heights, loud noises, snakes and spiders.
Having been bitten a few times by spiders and gotten deathly ill, I realized that they were dangerous to my health. As a child. I vomited all night and my face blew up at a sleep over. All my girlfriends freaked out.. If Barnum’s and Bailey’s Circus had been in town they would have taken me as part of their freak show…
It started that first night in the Fey cottage. The movers left, and my friend, Michael, and I went out, bought a whole chicken and ate the entire bird with no silverware or napkins. After much searching we unpacked the sheets, made his bed and my bed.
“Good night,” I said.
Throughly exhausted from moving from Sedona to Carmel, I went to my musty smelling bedroom.
“Do I smell mold?” I asked to myself.
I crawled into bed with Sophie, my Bichon Frise, and covered myself in my feather comforter. I looked up.
Right on top of me was a big, dark and hairy spider.
“Aaaaah!” I screamed.
I jumped out of bed.
“Michael…” I screamed again.
Barefoot, I ran across the uneven cold Mexican red pavers in the kitchen to the other end of the cottage. Michael was sleeping soundly. I shook him violently.
“Wake up! There’s a hairy beast in my room.”
Michael, the poor guy, did not know what hit him. But, being a guy, he got up and was still wearing the soiled gray sweat pants and ripped blue flannel shirt he had worn all day during the move.
“Ugh…didn’t you take a shower before going to bed?” I asked.
“I don’t remember…where’s the intruder.”
With much trepidation, I took him back to my bedroom. My uninvited guest was still there on the ceiling – on my side side of the bed.
“Do you want me to kill him?”
Okay, I admit it; I’m no victim or damsel in distress. I would have killed him if I still lived in Sedona where the spiders are Tarantulas. They crawl in bed with you…but that’s another story. It’s too intimate, and I don’t know any of you well enough to tell.
But, something came over me, It must have been the change in environment—the all green and lushly feminine Carmel scenery, not hard and red Sedona rocks.
“Can’t you catch him and put him a…bottle or something?” I pleaded.
It took us awhile, for I had given away or recycled all my jars. Finally, I found a crystal wine glass in one of the unpacked moving boxes.
Michael got up on my bed. It squeaked a bit. I’m not sure why…okay I know why, it’s because I was embarrassed. The last time it squeaked like that was in the middle of the night in Sedona with my narcissist boyfriend, who I was madly in love with who lavished me with praise and love until he didn’t.
“I’ve got him!”
“Great”
“Oops…”
“What?”
“I got him, but he’s missing two legs.”
My heart sank. I had just moved into the perfect fantasy fairy cottage I created in my mind and had just manifested. It took me a couple of years but it was worth it.
“Do spiders legs grow back?”
“You mean like salamanders?”
“Yeah, like salamanders.”
In the morning when I awoke, I rolled over. No spider. Relieved, I glanced up and out of the corner of my eye, I saw my spider with the two missing legs on the ceiling. He had slept with me all night! As long as he stayed on his side of the bed, I’d be okay with sharing my bedroom with him. He’s definitely better than my ex-boyfriend from Sedona.