Festival in the park and a giant spider

FESTIVAL IN THE PARK

This morning there was a festival in the park right outside our apartment. I think it was some kind of dragon festival for the local community. It was very cool; lots of fireworks, music, people dressed up in a groups forming long dragons and two people dressed up like giants. This is a really nice park. In the morning the senior citizens come out an exercise, during the day small children are brought here by their mothers and play on the swings and slides, during the afternoon school children come to hang out, and at night the adults come out to socialize.

GIANT SPIDER

Last night Charlene was getting ready to take a shower and I heard a loud scream "Ahhhh". I thought it was probably just another cockroach that she usually freaks out about. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god! It is so fucking big!" OK, well maybe it was a really big cockroach, like the ones they have to eat on Survivor. Well I guess I should check it out. "It's a HUGE spider!" OK, this is not so cool. Cockroaches are one thing, an enormous spider (this is a tropical environment) inside our apartment is not good.

I go into the bedroom and she points to the drapes covering the window. I slowly pull it back and don't see anything. "Are you sure you saw one?", "Yes, I'm sure", "Maybe it was on the outside screen and not inside?", "Maybe". So I closed the drapes. Well, I thought, if the spider is inside and not outside I better check again more thoroughly. I pulled back the drapes again. I looked up into the top corner of the screen and saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in my entire life. The only spider I've seen that was bigger, was one of those bird eating tarantula spiders in the pet stores. This thing was fucking HUGE!!!

The picture below does not do any justice to show how big the spider really was. You know the size of a music CD? This thing was as big as a CD. This is not exaggeration or hyperbole, it was THAT big.

How in the hell am I going to kill something this big that is stuck up on the corner in the screen? We got some bug spray and I grabbed a shoe to use as a "weapon". I pulled back the drapes as Charlene drowned the spider in bug spray. The bug spray didn't even seem to bother the spider, she drowned it for at least 20 straight seconds and it just kept moving around the screen, not really crumbling up in a ball like normal spiders do when you spray them.

OK the bug spray is NOT going to kill this thing, so plan B. I used my "weapon" and nudged the spider around to try to get it to fall on the floor. I couldn't swat the thing on the screen because it was just too big and would not be able to get "smashed" between the shoe and screen. It jumped from the screen to the wall, and then I finally knocked it down on the floor. It was very alive, but the bug spray was maybe starting to kick in because it wasn't moving around as fast. I thought for a second and then ended up smashing it with my hand held shoe. It didn't even "crush" or "squish", it was so big that it basically died like crushing a small bird or something.

I grabbed a plastic bag and some paper towels and carefully placed it inside. Charlene quickly took it to the trash dumpster and our late night adventure was over. Knowing that spiders the size of a man's fist can enter and roam around the apartment does not make you feel very good. What is the saying about cockroaches? For ever 1 you see, there are 10 that you don't see. I hope that doesn't apply to gargantuan sized spiders.

On a positive note, the weather is finally starting to cool off.

Jim