L'arachnophobie

Although I have an intense fear of bugs, especially roaches, spiders have never really bothered me very much. Growing up with a biologist dad, I quickly learned how to identify the venomous brown recluse spider, the only dangerous spider in Northeastern Kansas. But even the threat of their necrotic toxin didn't seem to instill any sort of real fear in me (although it probably should have). And as for harmless spiders, no problem! I even found little black jumping spiders kind of cute. Such a statement would make my highly arachnophobic twin cringe, and I'll admit that I've teased her many, many times for her fear of spiders.

Perhaps she would be pleased to know that karma has finally come back to bite me in the ass.

When I've visited France in the past, I've never seen any kinds of spiders anywhere. In the 19th-century foyer in the 7th district, there were none. No spiders invaded the modern foyer in the 18th district. Neither of my apartments in Paris had them. I've never seen a single one at Gaby's house. Even when I took walks in the forests, I didn't ever see any spiders! I was beginning to think France just didn't have as many spiders as the U.S. or that they simply tended to avoid the Paris area.

Boy was I wrong.

One night a month or so ago, I was getting ready for bed and had just removed my contacts. As I was drying my hands, I happened to look down and through blurred vision could see a very dark spot in the corner of the otherwise white walls. What was that? Mud? How had it gotten on the wall? I put on my glasses. It was a spider, but not just any spider. An enormous one. I stood there frozen staring at its dark brown bulbous abdomen and long hairy legs curled up underneath it. Ugh.

Gaby? I croaked. He must have sensed the fear in my voice because he came to the bathroom immediately. I pointed.

Do you want me to kill it? he asked.

Now this might seem like a dumb question to most people, but not to me. I usually cannot stand to kill spiders; they're supposed to be our friends and take care of all kinds of nuisance insects. So usually I just trap them in a jar and take them outside to be released into the wild where they belong. Not this time. The spider was in a corner where trapping it would have been difficult, and I just couldn't imagine trying to fit it underneath one of our narrow glasses. To see if it was alive, Gaby sprayed it with the shower nozzle. It fell on the floor and didn't move.

See? he said, It's not even alive.

Could you spray it one more time just in case? I asked.

He did. The spider immediately spread out its long long legs and tried to run away, fast. It was probably almost 3 inches long with its leg span and it was heading straight towards me. I tried not to scream. Gaby's shoe came down on it and I closed my eyes and covered my ears to avoid hearing that awful crunch. Brr.

Two days later, we found another one just as big that we had unknowingly killed by closing the bathroom door on it. Fearing we might have a spider problem, I tried to determine where they could be coming from. I covered up a washing machine pipe that's not in use at least to keep them from hiding in there, but hoping that that was their entry point. Right. Then we didn't see any more of them for awhile and I figured that was the end of it.

Out of curiosity, I tried to figure out what kind of spiders they were through different websites. They looked and crawled almost like wolf spiders, but they seemed smaller. I finally found pictures and descriptions that most closely fit our spiders, and apparently they're quite simply referred to as "Giant House Spiders." Great. Huge spiders that regularly come indoors.

Last night we found the latest one, just as big as the other two, in the bedroom, closest to my side of the bed of course and with the beginnings of a thick web to go along with it. Sick. It has since joined its fellow spiders in the arachnid afterlife and I spent a night of fear-induced insomnia. The thought of such enormous spiders crawling on me freaks me out way too much.

So yay. Thanks France. Way to pull a fast one on me, making me think there were no spiders near Paris or just little harmless ones. Instead we've got mini-tarantulas wandering around. Sorry Jill for ever making fun of your arachnophobia.