Of Hair to Remember - SoCal Writers Showcase

Of Hair to Remember
By Carol Celeste, Orange County Branch

When I see a daddy longlegs huddled in a corner the recollection of my first encounter with one of its hairy relatives comes to life. The memory involves a Caribbean tarantula that far exceeded the specifications of “spider.” These guys are the arthropodal equivalent of Sumo wrestlers—massive, mighty, mulish—reaching12 inches in diameter and six inches in height.

The event occurred on a sultry evening soon after moving to the tropics. I had just returned home from a soothing evening at a waterfront café where I sipped a rum concoction and contemplated the shimmering lights of ships anchored at sea. The air was silent save for the whispering of bamboo leaves caressing each other in a fragile breeze.

I entered a front room to block out the offending glare of street lights shining through open metal louvers. Since the room lacked furnishings, I didn’t bother with a light. I ambled to the window and cranked the handle to close the slats.

As I turned toward the hall, an indefinable shadow in the opposite corner popped into view. I had never seen a giant tarantula, but intuition suggested the blob’s identity. I moved toward the door at an even pace. When I reached the hall I slammed the door behind me, relieved that the “spider” was too large to squeeze underneath. In spite of my trembling, I decided to verify the squatter’s identity before calling the maid for help. I’d look foolish if I asked her to exterminate a giant dust ball. Hoping the vision was the rum at work, I cracked the door just enough to let my hand reach the light switch, flicked it on and withdrew with the speed of a gecko’s tongue zapping a fly. I peeked around the door to see lurking in the corner a huge, ebony-haired, eight-legged monster.

I forgot my lifelong inability to kill even the tiniest octoped and attempted to send the beast into oblivion with one blow from a 10-pound sack of dog food. (Remember, I had a maid to clean up the results.)

Tarantulas are blind, I learned. They detect approaching objects with a radar sense. As the sack zeroed-in on the target, the fuzzy fighter took what for it was probably a small step but to me seemed a humungous lunge in my direction. I jumped faster, back into the hall, slammed the door, and yelled for the maid. Forget pride. I wanted that threatening hairball out of my house.

Barefooted and armed only with a rolled up newspaper and matches, the fearless and diminutive maid, laughing at the cacata invasion, entered the room. I didn’t watch. For me it was an unwelcome visit from the welcome wagon; for the maid, a few months worth of laughs around the platanero’s produce cart. For the tarantula, well, its squatting days went up in flames.

That night, and many others, I lay awake waiting for an army of hairy arachnids to avenge their comrade’s death. They will come, I know they will.