Wildlife Kingdom

Well…I told you I’d tell you some of the Puerto Rico stories, so here’s the first one. It’s about the fucking tarantula that decided to stop by one night. As if the place wasn’t like a frigin animal amusement park. There were lizards EVERYWHERE, stray dogs, roosters, mice and a bull frog, that according to C, “was the size of a small dog,” as he dramatically held his hands out like somebody trying to describe the size of the fish they caught.

I should start out by telling you that I’m petrified of spiders. PETRIFIED. I am completely freaked out by them and have been for most of my life. The only other creatures that might bother me more are snakes. I’ll get my panties in a bunch over a regular old spider…so imagine my delight when I saw this fucking armor plated behemoth walking through our kitchen. You could almost hear its hooves clacking on the floor.

Thankfully, I wasn’t the one who saw it first. C spotted it and yelled, rather high pitched, to KB for a paper towel. I was standing only a few feet from C and as I turned and saw it I was literally paralyzed. KH and X were standing next to me and they turned when he yelled too. So KB hands C a wad of paper towels and C bends down to kill it. As he does this though, he realizes that he “would like a little more than a paper towel” between him and this arachnid tank. So he quickly thrusts his arm up and the tarantula runs toward him. FUCK. I’m still standing there and all I can manage to do is yell, at the top of my lungs, “KILL IT, KILL IT, KILL IT…” You get the point.

KB is now pissed because C jumps out of the way and now the thing is running into his room. So C yells back at KB that he should kill it. So KB picks up a frying pan off the counter and marches into his bedroom. C follows to supervise. X is now saying that we should catch it and let it go. KH is laughing at me, but also encouraging them to kill it. And I’m still standing in the same spot, yelling, “JUST KILL IT, DON’T CATCH IT. JUST KILL IT…JUST KILL IT.”

All I can hear from the bedroom is a lot of yelling and commotion. And that thing is still not fucking dead yet. I can hear the sound of furniture being shifted around and KB and C shuffling all over the place out of fear the thing was going to pop out from under something any second. And then it finally did. And thankfully I had regained movement and moved to the doorway just in time to watch C make a standing jump onto KB’s bed. Frankly, I didn’t know he had those kind of reflexes or athletic capability for that matter, but I suppose giant poison spiders are motivational.

Anyway, not knowing where the thing is, I retreat back into the kitchen. X is still mumbling something about catching it and I want to punch him in the face. There is no part of me at all that feels bad about this thing dying. The sooner the better…and I certainly don’t want it to have another chance to get back in the house and possibly wind up in my room the next time.

Finally, after more yelling, shuffling and furniture moving we hear a loud bang. And then another and then a third. Out walk KB and C, like victorious soldiers coming home from war. It was dead.

Thank God there were only two nights left though, because I couldn’t sleep for shit. Even after getting drunk. I know those things reproduce…who knows how many more could have been lurking.

Below is Pepe, the stray dog we adopted for a couple of days. We fed him and gave him a bath and in return he showed us lots of affection...by humping our couch incessantly.