#9

I had such an exciting time last night .. NOT! I had gone to bed and was reading my book, in relax mode before turning off the light. The ghost of a movement caught my eye and initially I thought it was Em's tail but then I had a second look and immediately wished I had'nt because there on the wall was one of the most humungous huntsmen I've ever seen!

HUGE! and awfully scary, its body was easily as long as from the tip of my thumb down to the first joint then it had the top bit with the eyes as well, its legs were shorter than the ones we are used to but they were thicker too and I did not like the look of it at all. Of course I had no-one to help me, Sam Slob was working hard, Tinks just looked at it and didn't bother getting up. There was no way I was going to get any sleep with that thing running all over the place so I had to do something.

I went into the kitchen and firstly grabbed a plastic cup, returned to the bedroom .. nahhhhh too small, back to the kitchen and returned with a plastic bowl. On returning to the bedroom I thought it would fit but it might just slide out the pouring spout and I just would not be able to handle that! Back to the kitchen rummaging around the cupboards when I noticed the plastic colander .. yes that would do nicely. Back off to the bedroom with a silent prayer please let it still be where I left it and not disappeared somewhere, there is just no way I could get any sleep with that inside the house, (reminds me of an awful night I spent some years ago in a room with too many spiders, tell you that one another day) but thankfully it was still in the same position where I had left it, about knee high on the wall near my bedside table. Phew!

I stood there looking at it, my heart rate rising and I was getting rather flushed and hot and sweaty. I looked and looked and crept around the side of the bed - it didn't move. Step by painfully slow step I sneaked up on it, its back was facing me but I was very certain it was watching me with its 8 eyes. Actually with the benefit of hindsight it was probably mesmerised because I was in the nuddie. Hotter and hotter I was becoming, and closer and closer to it. When I thought I was within range I slowly bent over and painstakingly lowered the colander to approximately fit the spider when I trapped it against the wall. Then I moved the colander closer to the spider, at this stage about 20cm away from it. OOOAAAHHHHHHHHH IT MOVED!!!! But obviously only to keep a better eye on me.

It was now or never!!!! With speed born of absolute terror and desperation I whacked that colander against the wall, got it!!!!! Never mind that awful scrabbling noise and heaviness of spider against my fingers, I have to bear it and I do have thin plastic between it and me. By this time sweat is running down my cheeks - I thought I had let that stuff behind when I left Queensland, lol - now I had to figure out how to put something over the top of the colander so you know who wouldn't escape.

I scrabbled one-handed through my sock drawer remembering a sheet of flimsy A4 paper I had placed in there, thankfully I found it and carefully slid it between the wall and the colander, ewwww the spider scrabbled again, I was way too chicken to look down at it, just fixed my eyes on making sure the paper covered the whole circumference of the colander. But now this paper was way too flimsy, no way would I put my hand over it to keep it on with an angry (huge) spider battering it, I slid the whole shebang along the wall to the corner cupboard, opening the door one-handed and seeing a more substantial piece of almost cardboard paper, yippeee I've got this thing beat. Carefully sliding the cardboard over the paper at long last I started to breathe again.

Wiping my eyes I carefully made my way in darkness to the front door, struggled one-handed with the locks and finally opened the door, of course no-one could see me, it was pitch black outside, no wind, so I crept to the side of the balcony and threw the whole lot as far as I possibly could, and then like the bravehearted mama I am, I ran back inside as quickly as I could with jiggly bits everywhere, slammed the door and locked it as quickly as possible.

That was a big deal to me, it took all my courage to get so close to such a scary big thing on my own and I can honestly say it took me at least half an hour to calm down enough to turn off the light and go to sleep. I will be happy if I NEVER see another of those in my lifetime.

Love from Mum
xxxxxx