Tarantulas are not my friends

So I almost died last night—of shock. I was just sitting on my bed writing a paper for Spanish class, when out of nowhere, 2 feet away, a spider pops out from under my door. And by spider, I mean the biggest spider I had I ever seen in my life! A 4-inch in diameter tarantula! I know that you probably don’t believe me. I would have taken a picture, had it not immediately crawled under my bed. I don’t know about you, but I can’t go to sleep knowing that there is a tarantula under my bed that could end up on my face in the morning. I gather that you probably couldn’t either, even if you didn’t have a serious spider phobia. But, as you probably already know, I am one of those severe arachnophobia nut cases.

I was basically wide-eyed and trembling on the opposite side of the room crouched down with my headlamp shining on the tarantula in an effort to not lose track of it. After all, the only thing worse than having a tarantula in your room, is having a tarantula in your room and not knowing where it is. I crouched there in fear for 5 or 10 minutes, as the tarantula had a hey day under my bed. What to with a tarantula... (Thanks to Juliane, and the Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide that she gave me, I know how to get one off of me if one ever gets on me. I hope that never happens. But the book doesn’t elaborate on tarantula removal). Let’s just say that my Bugzooka was not designed for tarantula removal. (I’d need a BugCannon for that job). The idea of chasing it with a shoe was about as appealing as just ignoring it and going to sleep. Another thought was that I could go to the living room, sleep on the couch, and worry about the tarantula in the morning when my family could help me out. I might have done this, but unfortunately the door to the living room was locked. And I sure wasn’t going to sleep in a chair in the courtyard and die a slow cockroach-induced death.

Compared to the tarantula, cockroaches suddenly seemed rather cute and cuddly to me. The freak out ratio for me is now about 10 cockroaches: 1 tarantula. If I had had a big heavy bowl and the tarantula was in a more easy to reach location (aka not under my bed) I would have chosen the trapping strategy. But, alas, I had not bowl and wasn’t about to crawl under my bed. Another option might have been to spray the tarantula to death with an insecticide. However, I didn’t have that and even if I did, I would be very nervous about chasing a tarantula armed only with raid. (Also, I read a Honduras PCV blog where this girl tried this method and it just made the tarantula more aggressive and it started running right at her. No gracias.) So my remaining options were 1. Stand there like an idiot all night. 2. Be a fool and wake up one of my host brothers at 1 am to kill it. I chose the latter.

My brother Marcio was really cool about it. He came in with a broom handle that seemed to be designed just for the killing of large tarantulas. My brother trapped it in the corner under my bed and did the dirty work. He even removed the carcass from my room. What a good brother. However, if you can image, tarantulas leave quite a gooey mess. Unfortunately, he didn’t clean that up. And here in Honduras, if you don’t clean something like that up, you end up with a platoon of arts. That was about the last thing that I wanted to wake up to. After all, I had definitely had enough creepy crawlie fun for at least the next 24 hours. So that meant that I had to wet wipe up the mess. Wet wipes = one of the best things I brought. I welcome wet wipe care packages. (I definitely procrastinated on cleaning up this mess. My Spanish paper began to get rather very long and rambly…) But I had spoken to soon on the bug thing. A furry spider appeared from the doorframe. At least it could be Bugzookaed.

So since the incident, I have crammed my plethora of Spanish grammar books under all three of the doors that lead to me room. (All of those books did come in handy for something…) However, I’m not sure about the effectiveness of this, as my walls are covered with cracks and crevices that give bugs easy entrance. Also, some of the walls don’t quite meet. Maybe at least I’ll keep the tarantulas out. I wish I had a caulking gun or some spackling. I’d at least like to duct tape a few places (such as the holes over the head of my bed.) All I know is that when I get to my site and have my own house, I’m going to duct tape it mercilessly.

I had almost gotten to sleep, but the creatures in my ceiling/on my roof were having a late night fiesta. By the sound of them, they are too big to be cockroaches, tarantulas or mice. I’d say that there’s a 90% chance that they are rats. They are really chewing things up up there. The dust from a hole flies down sometimes. I hope they don’t chew through the ceiling. Now, that would be charming. My host mom swears that they are cats on the roof. If only...