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Arachnophobia Live At My House
When Living in Texas, Keep Calm And Carry On
After landing in Austin, TX, we temporarily moved into a remodeled 30-year-old, red-brick house and couldn’t believe how we lucked out! It was all good until shortly after move-in, I saw something black moving from the corner of my eye, which I was praying was just an autonomously moving, large hairball; a hairball with black furry legs…. Wait what?! My body instantly paralyzed, I stood in shock.
Afraid of swallowing the last bit of spit to avoid even the most minuscule air vibration that could motivate that prehistoric spider to dash into one of the many nooks and crannies gracing our new dwelling, or worse — towards me(!), I froze. Panting frantically, I tried to come up with a rescue operation to save my life while staring down the spider not to lose sight of it.
Any blink or sneeze could mean absolute demise. What if that was a jumping spider?! I wasn’t used to this. All that was creepy crawling in NYC were some daddy-long-legs, that I managed to accept as a minor nuisance. I really should have come here more prepared and read up on that local species guide they have at the HEB checkout counter (for good reason)…
Not knowing what I was dealing with, adrenaline put me on auto-pilot. Don’t they say, “Know thy enemy”? Now it was paramount to stay as calm as possible and carefully seek out hard, movable objects to use as weapons of mass destruction. While in a state of emergency, I was desperately texting my husband in the other room for help, while keeping one eye on the enemy.
Husband stayed unresponsive as usual (his phone chronically out of juice), so I went on to plan B. With my sweaty hands clawing a size 12 Nike sneaker — some real heavy hitter — I’d go in ready position, and SMAAAAASH said spider to completely extinguish it. With a large exhale of relief I watch brown slime seeping out of its exoskeleton, legs still twitching in slow-motion. I’d keep staring at it, expecting it to pounce at me like the “mother” in Arachnophobia.
