Sleeping with a Red and Orange Squatter

What you don't know won't hurt you

It was finally time to sleep, and sleep lately hasn't come easy.

My sheets are old, thin, and comfortable. Perfect for the hot, stuffy night. With my eyes closed and my body relaxed, I started drifting off into blessed rest.

The phone began to ring. Only specific contacts can get through my Do-Not-Disturb phone settings. It was my son calling after his shift ended.

The conversation came fast and in broken pieces.

"It jumped on me. I threw everything off and -- and I began stomping on it!"

Fast breathing.

"It was red and orange. I -- I ---"

I was already sitting up in bed. "What jumped on you?"

"A spider!" My eyes looked to the side during the pause. 👀 "Mom, it was as big as my tire!" My eyes widened. Everything is bigger in Texas!

"Which tire?"

"The tire on my bike."

"Which bike?"

"The one I'm riding."

"Which one are you riding?"

"The one I just got." The medium one. A red and orange spider with legs spanning 20 inches in diameter? 

"Was it hairy?"

"Um, yes, a little, but not much."

My bedroom light was on, and I was now redressing.

"Where is it now?" I asked.

The pause was too long.

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?!"

"It was on my leg. It JUMPED ON MY LEG! I stomped on my pants."

"Did you kill it?"

Another pause.

"I don't know. I -- I --- I think it's in my pants still."

The pain in my head sat in the center of my skull like an anvil. "Do you want me to come over and have me help you look for it?"

The pieces weren't adding up. Without answers, I wasn't getting any sleep. Instantly, I regretted not purchasing that sweet, high-powered crossbow my friend and I found in Rhode Island a couple of years back.

When he confirmed my need to come over, I was slipping on my flip-flops. I drizzled my exposed hands, wrists, feet, and part of my face in Ranger-Ready bug spray (not an affiliate) and marched out of my apartment wide awake.

It may have been the quiet of the night or the heavy air, but my quick footsteps seemed louder than usual. It's about a five-minute walk or so between our apartments.

When I arrived, he opened the door.

The wall of heat and humidity was oppressive, a stark contrast to the sanctuary of my place.

In the living room, black pants lay crumpled on the floor like a discarded death shroud. My son stood tense and vigilant, now in shorts. He placed the steak knife he'd been clutching down on the counter. The living room and kitchen resembled that of a young working bachelor with bits and bobs strewn about, mangled cords of electronics in a corner, unwashed dishes, and crumbs.

I lowered my voice, "Are you OK?" His tension was thick, and while waiting for the answer, I scanned the room, searching for red and orange legs, the air silent and heavy.

I felt like I just stumbled onto a crime scene from the 80s.

I asked him to walk me through what happened. We thought he'd initially ridden under a tree with a hanging web and unknowingly picked up the eight-legged hitchhiker. He confirmed that tonight, for whatever reason, he'd taken a different route home.

When he arrived, he flipped on the kitchen light, placed his bike in the walkway, and began venturing across the semi-lit living room to the familiar path to the lamp on the other side.

That's when he felt the web.

While completing his step, he looked down just in time to see the giant red and orange spider leap onto his black jeans. "I threw my drink!" He pointed to the fresh cola stain on the opposite wall and floor and kept talking with his hands as he explained. "I threw off my backpack, undid this (his belt), took off my pants as fast as I could, and started stomping on them."

We both looked at the crumpled fabric like we were waiting for Dracula to rise.

Nothing moved.

I tried to be positive. "Hopefully, it's dead. You know. You never know if it was that big."

His eyes flared. Quickly going over to the flattened fabric folds, he started stomping on them again. "Yeah, that f----r, better be dead!"

He was upset, shaken, and angry.

Before the next part, I needed to know one last thing. "Show me where the legs stretched compared to your tire."

He pointed to the tire and touched one side of the tire wall to the other side, about four or five inches wide. My shoulders relaxed. "OK. OK. I thought you said, when it's as big as your tire, I was literally imagining, something as big as your tire, (motioning to the entire tire circumference). You meant the width of the tire."

"Yeah, yeah."

That's much better news. He pointed to his left calf. "It was clinging to me right here."

We both stared at the crumpled pants. Neither one of us wanted to check.

I stooped down and touched the edge of a pant leg, the room silent. The pants were wet. "Are these wet from the restaurant, sweat, or --."

"Bug spray." I rolled my eyes. Great. The poisonous red and black can of RAID sat dutifully nearby.

I pulled out the one pant leg we knew it wasn't in first. Inspecting it showed nothing. The other pant leg was folded in on itself. Checking it required careful unfolding.

I did this slowly, dropping the fabric each time I got close and only holding it with my finger and thumb. I pulled it out slowly, without stopping to unravel each wrinkle.

There was nothing there.

We looked at each other and started looking around.

"You know, you were freaking out, which is fine, but it probably jumped off of you as soon you started thrashing around. They're fast like that."

"But where?"

We looked at the footrest the web was attached to. My son is home less often between work and other things. He also only moves those things around in the living room a little. It's easy to imagine that with enough time, the spider felt like making itself a home.

I flipped on the light on my phone and began looking around his items like Sherlock Holmes with a magnifying glass. I found abundant dust bunnies, some abandoned webs near the TV, a few wrappers, an old kernel of dog food, and the remnants of various fallen insects forming a macabre tableau of death.

The spider has been at it for some time, and it has been some time since a decent cleaning.

We flipped over the footrest. Inspecting it, we found nothing, not even a web. It must have been new.

The next logical place the spider would have run is directly under the oversized, plush chair that sits about four inches off the floor.

Fatigue and exhaustion pressed each of us. My head was throbbing, but we needed to get to the bottom of this.

What we found next would keep us busy for the next 30 minutes.

Flipping the chair over, we discovered multiple webs in various places and scattered about in the folds of the fabric, around 20 different egg sacks.

We went to work removing them only to realize there were gaping holes from the bottom of the recliner to the insides where the arms of the chair were hollow.

We tore away the bottom protective covering to find more webs and a few more egg sacks. We removed those as well.

An emotional, sleep-deprived decision was to call the chair a total loss and burn it as a testament to man's most outstanding achievements.

Several factors brought us back to our senses.

• You can't burn things in the courtyard.

• The fire danger would be deadly.

• My dad was a firefighter and an EMT. His face and voice were clear in my mind: "No."

• We'd get into trouble with the law.

We never found the orange-and-red-offending-freeloading squatter in our search. We each tried to ignore the chills crawling up our spines.

A Google search of red-and-orange spiders brought more terror to mind with each passing image the results brought back to us. Finally, one looked familiar. "It was like this one," he said.

A common house spider. That was its name: Common House Spider. NOT-poisonous.

Relief washed over both of us, but we were not comforted. This spider likes to live near humans. 😩 I did not keep reading to find out why but learned their bright colors ward off other predators.

When it was over, I did take the opportunity to explain that his place needs a "for real" deep cleaning, that he cannot put it off any longer, and why. With the Texas heat and humidity, it would only be a matter of time before more bugs decide to call his place home. I also told him we would get rid of this chair and return to the second-hand store for a different one.

All my other plans for the next day were now put off.

It was after 11 p.m. now. "I'll be over at nine in the morning. NINE." He nodded. "Have your coffee and breakfast before I get here. Be ready to start cleaning at nine."

We parted ways. My head was splitting, pounding.

Arriving home, I found a familiar face. A sign from God?

My gecko friend had returned, feasting on the bugs outside my porch light. He was fatter and more prominent than I'd seen six weeks ago. I'd wondered what had happened to him. He refused to allow me to take his picture, fleeing. It was good to see him, though.

The following day, I arrived promptly at 9 a.m. with a fancy bottle of Lysol clinging-toilet-bowl gel in one hand and an entire bottle of water in the other.

He wore the same t-shirt the night before and had swollen eyes. "I've been cleaning for three hours already. This is what I've done so far."

Seventy percent of the job was done.

He hadn't really slept. He was too worried the spider would return for some middle-of-the-night revenge and decided to start cleaning.

After the apartment was spotless, swept, and mopped, my son felt better about trying to keep the chair.

At the store, he found some chemical barrier protection-type stuff that is supposed to last 18 months. I used half the bottle on the underneath portions and insides of that chair, spraying in every nook, cranny, and flat place I could see or reach. He took the rest and sprayed the inner permitter of the house, around the appliances, etc.

As of this writing, the spider hasn't been found, and there's been no sign of him since.

Dear Scribbler

Q. I need help writing in a journal on paper, on my phone, or using software. Even though nobody sees it now, someone will see it later. I'll still be judged. That's not fair. How can I start?

A. This stems from interacting with at least one person who frequently interrupts or talks over you. Doesn't matter who, but they, or a combination of people, have been doing it long enough to impact your ability to express yourself.

This happens more and more online, too. We don't want to deal with "backlash" of trolls and things of this nature, so we stay quiet.

I've self-censored myself in my journal entries. It leaves my stomach rolling, my emotions angry, and, after a time, quite fed up with the current state of things.

So, you're right. This isn't fair.

Make journaling without fear great again.

Here are some things I recommend.

1. Separate a log book of events (or other things you write about) written in less emotional terms from the journal or notebook where you let loose.

2. Write in a separate notebook where you let loose, on the condition that you will be OK throwing away those pages or destroying the notebook shortly after it's written.

In most cases, you will NOT destroy the pages or the notebook. The goal is to be OK with it, though. Once you're fine writing in a notebook like this (again, keep the highlights or shortened, non-emotional versions of the events happening in a different book), you can let loose and get it all out.

And trust me, you want to get it all out.

Getting it all out feels better and helps you see more clearly.

You know you need this.

Here's what happens.

• The first book, the highlights or non-emotional version, is safe to be found in most cases, right? It would be fine if someone read it (in theory), as it's just a listing of what happened that day or a lighter version of how you feel. This way, you're still preserving what happened that day, something you can reflect on.

• The second book, the one with how you really feel, with all the raw verbiage, lets you accomplish your goal without judgment. As soon as you know you can destroy it if you have to at any time (because the first version is already persevered), you can let loose more freely.

I do this myself.

I don't throw the second notebook away. I hope to keep them to see how far I've come and look back at my thought processes, but I know I can sacrifice the second one at any time.

It feels safer this way.

One Line

One-liners are sentences meant to prompt your memories and stimulate your creativity. Use them, if you want, to see what your brain comes up with. Do you see an image in your mind, feel something, remember something?

Whatever it is, start writing it down. There's no right or wrong answer. 🥳

The dark blob in between the stove and fridge, thankfully, turned out to be a crushed leaf stuck to a piece of fabric.

Mission

Pick up an object nearby—any object. Describe its texture, weight, and the memories it evokes. Let your mind wander.