Home again home again.

On September 18th, I spent the day hanging out in Manado.  I like it there, because I can go to the Manado Town Square, and there is a Hypermart.  It's kind like Walmart or K-Mart, and it's got a grocery store.  Sections of it however, always smell like rotten fish to me.  It is a place where I can get my precious, slightly different tasting Diet Coke, and Sprite Zero.  I drink pop like most people drink water, and the only place I can get it is in Manado, or Tomohon.  Then back to my hotel to pick up my bags from storage, and it's an hour and a half back to my house by taxi.  Pretty cool thing is, that only costs about 13 bucks.

I live on a road outside of Tataaran.  Tataaran is a village.  It is in the middle of nowhere, on the way to Tondano from Tomohon.  Tomohon is pretty cool.  Tataarana and Tondano aren't really.  I don't even live really in any of these places.  There's a collection of some houses down the road even further away from the village, and these houses are considered another village, called Tonsaru.  Technically, I guess I live there.  It's about a 45 minute walk to Tataaran, where I can find a whole array of storefront shops all selling the same thing (candy and pulsa - credit for cell phones), about 15 photocopy places (why?) and a bunch of places selling food I'd rather not eat, for fear of getting sick.  If I was more computer savvy, I would take a picture of where I live on google maps, and put it here, but I can't figure it out yet.  I'll get someone to show me eventually.

Anyway, I came home, and unpacked.  No new nests of spiders, but there were 5 extra toothbrushes in the bathroom.  Huh?

Then at around 10, I walked into the kitchen, and saw this.

Herman the hunter spider.

Are you a good friend of mine?  Do you know how much I hate spiders.  They TERRIFY me.  Just typing this now, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck raising.  This picture does not do it justice.  With it's hairy legs, it was bigger than my entire hand, fingers extended.  I think you can understand why I didn't get any closer to take a better picture.  I tried calling the caretakers.  I was afraid if I tried to kill it, I would miss (I am pretty uncoordinated) and it would run and hide somewhere I wouldn't be able to see, or worse yet, jump off the wall, and eat my face off.  Yes, I am fully aware that I'm not exactly a rational human being.  After a text and 5 frantic phone calls that were unanswered, I was in a panic.  I was sobbing and semi hysterical.  Yes, again, I know it was just a spider, but come on!  Look at that monster.  It's eyes are glowing at you!

I didn't know what else to do, so I called Julianne.  She is pretty much the only reason I haven't gone totally insane here.  Noreen, Michaela and Jackie have also been a big help, but since Julianne was here last year, she's pretty much my go to gal.  What exactly did I think someone who was 4 hours away by plane could do for me exactly, I don't know.  I already told you I was hysterical.  Ok, so I said semi hysterical, but I was lying before.  I was totally hysterical.

She calmed me down a little, and suggested I call John the ex-pat in Tomohon.  It was only a little past 10 after all, and maybe he would know exactly what kind of spider it was, and belay my fears.  Although, at that point, the only think I think he could have told me that would have totally calmed me down, was if they are blind vegetarians.  After hanging up with Julianne, I tried calling the caretakers one more time.  Oh my god, they answered.  YAY!  Why didn't I just walk over there, you ask?  2 reasons.  First, they have a baby, and I didn't want the dogs to start barking and wake up the whole house.  I figured a cell phone was OK.  Second, there was NO WAY I was letting that spider out of my sight, so it could go crawl somewhere else and hide until some other moment it decided it wanted to eat me.  I mean, it could have been full already from eating one of the rats in the house.  How did I know?  I just knew, that if I went outside, I would come back in and it would be gone.  I'm totally sure the caretakers already think I'm nuts. There's now way waking them up in the middle of the night for a non existent spider would have been good for our relationship.

So, over came Tanta Yeti and Om Deni.  At least when they saw the thing, they understood why I was standing in the kitchen, shaking and crying, with my phone in one hand, and my pocket Indo-English distionary in the other.  Om Deni went to gab the feather duster, which is their solution to almost every problem in the house.  Dead bugs in you bed, here, let me feather duster them away.  Rat dropping on the kitchen counter?  No problem.  He also grabbed the Force Magic, which is this great smelling Raid type stuff.  The he hit the spider...

... and missed.  WHAT!  The thing scurried across the kitchen counter, while Om Deni tried to hit at it,  comically missing each time because THAT THING WAS FAST!  It was like in Alien, after that thing came out of the guys stomach, and ran across the floor (don't ever try to google image a picture of that by the way....people on the internet are nuts, and I don't want to wish seeing what pops up on anyone else).  He was spraying a continuous stream of the Force Magic though, so eventually, he got the bugger.  With all of it's legs curled up and lifeless, it was still about the size of half of my palm.  They just thought this whole ordeal was SO FUNNY.  I am just a constant source of amusement to them.  Excellent.

After posting this lovely episode on Facebook, I was pretty much ridiculed by my friends.  I know that there are places with bigger and scarier spiders, but I don't want to go to those places.  I know that theoretically spiders can be the good guys, eating other household pests, like my rats, but I just can't help it.  I never should have seen the movie Arachnophobia, and as much as I'd like to forget about the guy in the jungle who woke up a a spider laying eggs on his face, and in his mouth, I can't (I really really pray that this is an urban(well jungle) legend).  Everybody has their thing, and my thing is spiders.