You are kidding me...

... that is exactly what I just said out loud on the back porch: You are kidding me!

After yesterday's blog about the spiders, I thought my husband had read it and was playing a practical joke on me. As soon as that thought entered my mind, it quickly left--- my husband wouldn't do that, and he's been too busy lately anyway.

As I was sweeping those pesky mesquite leaves from the backyard deck and the picnic table, right there on the porch railing was a huge (enormous) black spider. We're not talking a skinny little spider with pin-thin legs here. This one was huge (enormous), like the fuzzy fake ones you buy at Halloween to decorate the fake spider webs that you put up by the front door. (Not my kind of decoration, but fun to see on someone else's house.)

The body of this morning's spider was as long and as thick as my thumb. His head was the size of a marble. His legs were thick, and bent in the middle as if he had knees. When I saw him on the porch railing, my husband was underneath the house fixing an air-conditioning vent. Not exactly the time to ask him to kill a spider. I got a can of "Bengal Gold" from the house and sprayed that huge (enormous) spider till there was nothing left in the can.

And the spider just sat there on the railing for a few minutes.... I'm watching him, he's watching me. Then his legs started to bend and curl, and he fell off the railing and onto the deck. That's when I backed up about three feet, holding the broom in front of me in case the spider decided to walk in my direction. Thankfully, he went the other way and fell off the deck and into the flowerbeds. I don't know where he is, and I hope he wasn't heading under the porch because my husband is still under there.

With all of that Bengal Gold spray on him, I don't think that spider is going to be breathing too much longer. I hope he had his affairs in order, because today is his last day on this property.

I have never in my life, outside of the pages of a National Geographic magazine, seen a spider that size before. Some sort of tarantula? One more thing to add to the ever-growing list of creatures and critters.

What a release this blog is......... everything goes out of my mind and onto this page and I'm done with it. At least for the moment.