2003-11-01 2:06 p.m.
"But, Becky, what about the AOUSs?"

So, Becky and I had something of a minor adventure last night. It's 2 am, we're on the phone, Beck goes outside to smoke a cigarette, we're chatting about Halloween and how I had to work, so I couldn't do anything cool for my favorite holiday, and about how she drove the baby around to visit family and friends in her little pumpkin costume "HOLY FUCKING SHIT! OH MY GOD!" "What! What is it!?! Do you need me to come over?" "YES! You have to see this!" Get in the car. Speed over to Beck's, heedless of the fact that there might be cops in hiding places just waiting to pull me over because, technically, it is still Halloween, arrive at her door to find her still outside because on her door, just near the doorknob, is...the biggest motherfucking spider I have ever seen. Its body alone was over an inch long. Its legs...its legs had tiger stripes and they...they were BIG. Now, I'm not normally afraid of spiders. In fact, my Steve and I have a pet spider that lives in the plant on my kitchen windowsill. But this spider...this spider was an AOUS. An Arachnid Of Unusual Size. I was at a complete loss here. I just didn't know what to do. Neither did Becky. So we stood around smoking cigarettes, keeping at least one eye on the monster at all times. Then it moved. We jumped back. Leaned in a little closer to see what it was doing. It moved. We jumped back. We played this game for about ten minutes before it decided to make a string down to the ground. We jumped way back, and stayed back as it crawled, ever so slowly (we think it might have been pregnant, and Becky remembered how slowly she had been moving towards the end of her own pregnancy; I think it was at this point that we started to feel some sort of kinship with this spider) across the walkway to the bushes. It jumped a few times on its way, and every time it jumped, we jumped. Away from it, of course. It finally made it, and because of its weight, we could hear it rustling the dead leaves as it traversed the garden. We were saved. I mean, neither one of us had wanted to kill it, though that would have been the easiest thing to do. As frightening as it was, it was also very beautiful, its large size offering us a view of the details one might not catch while viewing a smaller specimen. It had a lovely bright white stripe down its back, as well as the aforementioned tiger striped legs. And anything that fucking big deserves some respect. So live long, eat well, and dream of large male arachnids, Mrs. Giant Fucking Spider.

<< / >>