~:: Tales of Santa Fe: Pt. 5 ::~

Here is the terrifying story of great courage:

In the nice little house the Dentists are renting, there is a pretty fab guest bathroom.  (Max has his own, and the master bedroom has its own.)  Like the rest of the house, it has a herringbone pattern bricked floor, light wood cabinets and is lined with bright, bird-festooned Mexican tile.  It also has a cool porcelain sink.  The bathtub itself is nothing spectacular, and it wears the usual coupla shower curtains.  The shower head is lousy – you have to run around between the drops of the water to get any kind of water pressure at all.

That is part one.

This is part two: do you know the difference between a Hobo spider and a house spider?  Don’t say yes, because I’ll know you’re faking.  They look almost exactly alike.  I think the house spider is the faster one – a house spider, usually anywhere between the circumference of a quarter and a half dollar (put the tip of your thumb against the tip of the middle finger of the same hand), can cover a floor at about five miles an hour.  Or twenty.  I forget.

The real difference is that house spiders are good, mostly because they eat hobo spiders.  And hobo spiders are bad, because they can make you incredibly sick.

And, of course, there is this: both species are – well – spiders.

I don’t remember which day it was, and frankly, it doesn’t matter (other than as a traditional story start), but it was one of those days I was down there when I started the day (after the treadmill – they have one, too) with a shower.  (Which could have been every day, which renders this whole beginning just stupid).  I opened the curtain, stepped into the tub, ran around catching water on my head until I counted as shampooably wet, lathered up a bit, looked down – and saw the spider. The pretty big brown, striped spider.

He wasn’t paying any attention to me.  He was preoccupied with not drowning.  Still, it gave me a start.

I considered my situation.  I was totally wet, without clothing, down a long hallway from my room, and in the house with my son-in-law – along with everybody else.  If I decided to freak out and leap out of the tub, there was NO WAY I was going to try to pick up a spider that size in a little wad of toilet tissue.  The idea of doing it unclothed somehow made the matter so much more icky.  So I’d have to call for help, then stand there dripping in a towel, with hair care products running down my face in generous rivulets.

It just didn’t seem worth the effort, then, to freak out.

So I didn’t.  I watched the spider, who by now had begun to turn into a pinched leg, dying ball.  He wasn’t showing a whole lot of life.  And I felt bad about that.  Dying in a pool of diluted medium-priced fine-hair conditioner seemed so sad.  Still –

When it seemed that there was no more to be worried about, I closed my eyes and began messaging my scalp, as happy as a person in a weak spray of hot water can be on a chilly winter morning.

Till I felt something brush by my toe.

When I looked down, the ball of spider was gone.  But the living spider was scooting past my foot as fast as his many legs could take him.

Here’s the great courage part: I STILL did not freak out.

I was pretty much finished anyway, and the spider had gone back into “I’m going to die” mode.  So I took another minute to rinse (they have soft water, and you can NEVER tell if there’s still soap slathered all over you), and then I got out of there.

I don’t know if someone else ever went in to do away with him, or if maybe he figured out a way to boost himself out of there, but I never did see that spider again.  And I was glad.  Thinking about it now, I’m pretty sure he must have been a house spider.  We’ve got hobo spiders in the barn, (size: make a fist) and I’m pretty sure they smoke cigars and gamble for money under the hay pallets.  I don’t think they would be the least bit interested in taking a shower.

post script:  G informs me that he rescued the spider.  Took him outside and tried to put him up off the ground in a really sunny spot.  This was, of course, just before the subzero temps dropped like bricks on our heads.  That spider’d had a really, really bad day –