Your kind isn't welcome around here

The other night was just like any other night. I was up reading at 3am while my husband was snoring next to me. One of our cats, Phoebe, had been incessantly noisy off and on all night, as she sometimes does, so the reading wasn't going well, as I had to balance between concentrating and trying to get the damn cat to shut the hell up.

After one such episode, I was hunkering back down to read some more, when I suddenly saw a small spider, about the size of a nickel, on my shoulder. My immediate reaction was, of course, "shit!!!", but then I attempted to just smush the thing on my shoulder, because there was no other recourse at the moment, and I wanted the thing dead. Well, I guess my smack didn't hit it, or hit it hard enough, so it scampered off under my husband's pillow. Great. I had two choices (at least in my mind I only had two): either wake him up so we can search the bed for the spider, or yank the pillow out from under him while he was sleeping in a desperate attempt to catch the little bugger. I definitely thought the former option was the best, since only 3 years into the marriage I don't harbor enough animosity for my husband to be so violent with his pillow.

Well, let's just say he wasn't happy about being awakened, and move on. He picked up his pillow, we pulled down the covers, and did a complete search for the elusive spider. Nothing. The bastard had disappeared into the recesses of the bed and was probably lurking somewhere in the apartment. No problem. We have three cats, one of whom is particularly skilled at bug torture and demise. At this point, I was still trying to justify the need for waking up my husband, when a third option seemed to have made itself perfectly clear: forget about the spider and leave your husband alone. Well, I'm sorry, but this is not possible. I am not aware of the range of spiders local to Greece and if there are poisonous ones. I hadn't gotten a good enough look at this one to determine if it could have been poisonous, and people in America can die in their beds of spider bites, if they are really, really unlucky.

At any rate, my husband went back to sleep, I turned off the reading lamp so he wouldn't grumble and fall asleep faster, and I, of course, had to stay awake and think about the fact that the spider could still be crawling around in our bed. Every itch, every sensation was that damn spider crawling on me. And since I have a cold, it was entirely possible that it might crawl into my mouth while I was sleeping. Egads!

The more I thought about it, the more annoyed I got. We live in the city center, 7 floors above ground level. Why in the HELL are we dealing with a spider in our apartment? Mosquitoes, flies, roaches I can understand, but spiders are most often found in more bucolic locales or suburban areas. Spiders do NOT belong in the city. I can only imagine their existence here is the result of so many people creating urban jungles on their balconies. This is the same reason I end up with leaves to sweep up on the balcony even though we don't have any plants.

It reminded me of a time in Nashville, when my friends and I unwittingly transported a poor squirrel from the paradise of suburbia (also known as Bellevue, snort) to lower Broadway. The squirrel came tearing out of my friend's van like a Christian out of a gay bar, and there was nothing we could do. That squirrel was completely out of its element, and probably died pretty soon thereafter, unless it hitched a ride back to suburbs, or at least made its way back to Vanderbilt or Belmont.

But, spiders are not as cute as squirrels, and I haven't shown that I can weave faster than Athena.

Arachnids beware: we don't want your kind around here anymore.