The second scarriest thing that’s ever happened to me: Arachnophobia sets in…

A couple weeks ago I made a post about the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me: Driving my boss’s BMW X5 luxury sport utility vehicle. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have a scenario that comes in a REALLY close second. When I told people about the research I was doing this summer and how it concerned insects, they were confused. You see, I am not what you might call a “bug person.” Now, I have to defend myself; as I have gotten older, I have become much better with insects. Basically as long as it’s not a spider or a bee, I can deal with it. And if it’s a small spider, it doesn’t bother me at all.

^^^ This is not how I spent my childhood… but I did collect lightning bugs and caterpillars.

So let me paint a picture for you! This past Tuesday, I was out in the field as usual doing the same old stuff: pitching the kick-net, stirring up all the aquatic bugs, picking through the net, and collecting larval mayflies. Our location was, shall we say, off the beaten path; Mogli and I had to leave the car back by the road and walk into the site on foot…or just under the gate (Shhh!). As one might imagine, the whole creek was a bit difficult to access. There was a ton of vegetation and the gravel road was quite a distance from the actual water, so it’s not like we could just scamper through a few leaves and Voila! Water! It was more like choice A) Climb down a shear cliff or choice B) Fight your way through thick trees, bushes, shrubbery, POISON IVY/OAK for a good 30 feet to get to the creek. Well, because we wouldn’t want to disappoint you, we did both. Actually…because we had no choice, we did both.

Vs.

For the first five or so sites, we simply waged war on the wilderness that had officially reached “climax community” status…on the forest floor. We were thinking of heading out but we agreed that one more site would be nice to add to the list. Let me make a sidenote that Mogli is the president of the rock climbing club at our university. So he convinces me that we can climb down this wall of boulders that leads to a very lovely section of the creek. Well thank goodness he knows what he’s doing because I almost took a tumble a couple times on the way down.

So we reach the bottom safely and I am sent out into the water to pitch the kick-net. Halfway into the creek with the water at my knees, I notice this black mass sitting on a rock out of the corner of my eye. You know how your thoughts slow down tremendously when something alarming is about to happen; that whole ” your life flashes before your eyes” bit? Well, in the back of my mind, all within a split second, my thought process was, “Dear God, say it isn’t so. Tell me that’s not a spider.” God answered me. He said, “Yes.”

I kid you not, the thing was the size of my HAND. It was the most disturbing thing I have witnessed in my entire life. Anyway, back to story. With the shock of seeing a spider that huge, my first reaction was yelling, “OH MY JESUS LORD!” I wheeled around and started making my way very quickly back to the other shoreline. Mogli thought I was being attacked by something and was at my side in seconds. “I thought there was a water snake that bit you or something!” I pointed to the spider; his reaction was about like mine…but slightly calmer. I reminded him that a water snake would have been infinitely better than that monstrosity of an arachnid. Snakes don’t bother me a bit.

We tried…Ahem…Mogli tried capturing the spider so one of us could mount it on our wall. Heck, maybe it would be a new world record and it would put us through school! But our forceps were WAY too small and directly pouring ethyl acetate onto it would have been kinda cruel. So it got away. The next day at the art gallery, my coworker (I will call her Betty) and I googled different spider species to see if I could identify what the thing was and we concluded that it was a FISHING SPIDER. That’s right, folks. The darn thing eats FISH! And tadpoles! It even DIVES! Can you believe that?! I told her that it’s a darn good thing I didn’t know that the day before because I had to get back in that water, hold the net, and wait for Mogli to kick before I could get outta there. It could’ve had my leg for lunch!

^^^ Do you know how excruciating it was to find this image?! UGH!

Truth be told, that spider was way more afraid of me than I was of it…I think.