Conclusion of the tarantula story...

I just realized I never finished the tarantula story. It’s quick and ends with man being victorious.

The weekend after I saw the tarantula run under the stove and I tried to bake it out or whatever, my friend Malia (an Environment Peace Corps Volunteer living in the mountains in the center of the country) came to visit. It was Friday night, around 9:30 or 10:00 and she and I had just got back to my house after a day of walking around my town, showing her the sites and meeting the people. I was standing in the kitchen and she was sitting at a bar stool type chair, both of us enjoying a peanut butter and crackers snack, when she pointed to the floor, about 10 feet away and started sort-of hyperventilating/screaming.

“Stace! Stace! Stace! Huge Spider! Tarantual! There!”
“Ahhahhh!” I screamed half out of fear half out of motivation to bring the end to this giant spider that I knew would find a way to make my life miserable in the future.

I ran around the small space of the kitchen in circles trying to think of what to do. Could I kill it myself? And if I did, with what? Should I attempt to cover it with a pan and just drag it across the floor outside, where hopefully the outdoor elements would take care of it? I frantically began to open the cupboards looking for a pot to cover the beast with. In the meantime, Malia had begun to whimper and was sitting on her feet on the chair, watching the giant spider to see where it would go next.

“This isn’t going to work,” I told Malia, as I held an oversized pot and lid in my pan. She looked at me and laughed and just shook her head. “Okay, you watch it, make sure it doesn’t go hide somewhere and I’m going to go get my neighbor.”

At this point I ran outside and realized that the guard (Placido is his name, by the way) who sleeps outside of my room every night for protection was walking around the house making sure everything was locked up. I saw him and frantically waved him over.

“Ayudame! Ayuadame! (Help me! Help me!),” I breathlessly said to him. At this point I couldn’t remember the word for spider in Spanish and just kept saying, “ayudame, ayudame!”

Placido calmly followed me into the house to find Malia looking panicked, crouched like a frog in the chair watching a very specific spot on the floor. I led Placido inside and pointed to the tarantula and said once more, “ayudame!”

Placido laughed to himself and these two crazy American girls scared to death of something so normal to him. He walked right up to the giant spider, without fear or hesitation and stepped on it as hard as he could.

“Ohhhhhhh,” Malia and I both belted out as we heard the crunch of the body collapse under Placido’s shoe. He looked up at us with a smile, walked outside to get a broom and without another word, swept the defeated and now dead spider outside.

Malia and I broke out into laughter and the sheer craziness of the last seven minutes or so. I got some bleach from the bathroom, put it directly on the spot of the murder just in case (you can never be too safe with germs). Malia relaxed, put her feet down, sat in a normal position in the chair and her and I finished our snack like it was the most normal thing in the world.

And this is just one of many more adventures I have yet to experience here in the DR.