Missouri And The Tarantula

An Arachnid Anecdote

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A Story Illustrated With Badly Drawn Stick Figures

I have a friend who moved to Missouri last year to take care of his elderly mother. Every week I can look forward to a phone call from Missouri full of tales and observations about my friend's not so fast paced life.

The story that follows had me rolling around in fits of giggles:

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"Hi Kat!"

"Hi Missouri! How are ya?" I replied in full imminent story anticipation.

Missouri and I chatted for a few minutes about how life was treating him when he suddenly blurted,

"Have I told you about the tarantula?"

"That would totally be a negative." I returned with more than a brimful of curosity.

"So, I needed this cable for my PS4, and I knew that we had to have one in the bin, you know, the bin or drawer full of cables that everyone has, right?" He began.

"Yes, I have a cable drawer, continue." I urged.

"Well, our cable drawer is in my bedroom closet, so I went to get it. My sister has a ton of bags of clothes in there."

"Why so many clothes?" I found this fact interesting for some reason, for I have never understood the need for so many articles of adornment.

"Kat! I have no idea!" he responded with what I can only describe as wanting to tell the narrative, antsy irritation, "It's not important."

"You brought the clothes into the story," I teased, "they have to be relevant."

"So, anyway," he continued as Missouri moves on when I divert as a way to irritate me. That's why we're such good pals. "I found the cable bin on the top shelf, and took it down and opened the lid, as I did so I looked up and staring back at me from the back of the closet was a freaking huge, hairy tarantula!"

"Heh!" I exclaimed, "What did you do?"

"I jumped back and slammed the door."

He then went on to tell me how he called management about the little friend in the closet, and apparently they weren't too concerned about the urgent nature of the request. They said they'd "Get to it." I just put forth that whole sentiment in a far nicer manner than Missouri related it to me. You're welcome.

"So, they didn't send anyone to liberate you from your tarantula invasion?" I might have relayed this query in a somewhat mocking manner, for at this point I was heavily amused.

"No," Missouri reflected, "they did not."

He went on to tell me how the previous tenant in their apartment had installed seals around the closet doors, so he was reasonably sure that the large arachnid was contained.

"If the closet doors were sealed, how did it get in there in the first place?" I inquired.

The sigh that I received in return was far larger in breadth than the behemoth that currently occupied Missouri's closet, and I readied myself for the rest of the story to slap me like I know that Missouri longed to at this juncture.

Um, my closet doors aren't sealed, now I am a little freaked out to even look in there...

"So, I removed everything from my room, even my bed," he went on in all impending tarantula combat seriousness, "I then went and got one of those big pickle jars. You know, those ones that sit on bar counters."

"Continue." I urged with my normal antagonistic self under restraint.

Well," he started, "I threw open the closet door and you know what was staring at me?"

"What?" I asked.

"Nothing. He wasn't in there."

"Well, where did he go, Missouri? If your closet was sealed he couldn't get out." I stated this bit of logic as fact.

"I'm getting to that part," he replied, "So, no spider in view, I got the cable box out and took off the lid so I could get that cable. Do you know what it's like to have a tarantula stare you in the face? Well I do."

I started laughing quite literally out loud at this point as I imagined Missouri's eyes bugging out of his head upon observing the spider in the cable bin.

"What did you do?" I questioned.

"Well, Kat, did you know that tarantulas can jump?"

"Why yes, Missouri, I was aware of that factoid." I replied as I bit my cheeks to keep from exploding into laughter.

"That thing jumped at me and I cowboy booted that sucker into the wall." Missouri exclaimed with disgust.

"The wall huh, why not to the moon!" I gushed in full giggle mode as I imagined that poor tarantula getting a boot to his thorax. (Sorry, the phrase "to the moon" is said so much here on Steemit that is has become a fairly common phrase in my daily lexicon).

"Go ahead and laugh! I stunned it and slapped the pickle jar down on top of that thing. There was a bit of a problem though." He stated this bit of tarantula intel in all seriousness.

"Oh ya? What? Did you have to brush spider leg hairs off of your boots? That poor arachnid!" I emitted, as I tend to have more than a modicum of sympathy for most living things.

"He wouldn't crawl up into the jar." My friend uttered this development in the spider saga with no small amount of disgust.

"Oh, that's just terrible." I teased, "Whatever did you do?"

"Well, the maintenance guy actually showed up at this point, but he wasn't a lot of use." he relayed this part of tale in disgust.

"Oh," I replied, "Why was that?"

"He is deathly afraid of spiders."

Missouri had to continue his tale of spider-woe over the soundtrack of my emitted mirth, for the vision of two grown men facing off against a tarantula in a pickle jar was all too much for this Kat. This was the image that I was thinking:

Well, after some debate, Missouri donned a pair of gloves, shoved the lid to the pickle jar under the spider and sealed him in the jar. You would think that the story would have ended there, but nope, my friend is what I like to call more than a little passive aggressive. He packed Mr. T down the hall to the office of the management lady that he spoke to earlier. Apparently the woman that he spoke to wasn't in at the moment, so he left the pickle jar on her desk with a note:

"Be Right Back: I'll get to this."

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"So, Kat, I really did have to go to the bathroom, and on my way back to management's office I heard this horrible shrieking scream. Guess that lady is afraid of spiders too." he delivered this line with about as much dryness as your aunt's favorite chardonnay.

"What did she say?" I asked in anticipatory seriousness.

""I get your point.' That's what she said, and you know what, Kat? She was a little on the pale side."

"I'll bet she was!" I replied laughing again, "What happened to the tarantula?"

"Well, the management lady called pest control (I laughed out loud at this point again), and they took the spider." he related this bit with so much seriousness that I was worried about the tarantula's fate.

"They didn't kill him did they?" I worriedly asked, I mean it wasn't like the big guy did anything wrong.

"Nope, pest control released it in to the woods next to a college. That guy said it was a good place for a tarantula."

"Good to know." I returned laughing again, for I had images of a tarantula chasing coeds down a college dorm hallway, as I had a moment of wonderment about the pest control guy's sense of humor.

You just never know what's going to come out of Missouri!

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Gratitude Filled Addendum Time: Thanks to the amazing support and upvotes received on my Bayview Daze article I was able to send some "just because" funds to my friend and his mother in Missouri. I say this not out of self-promotion or touchy feely "my friend needs help" attention gettery, but rather to let you all know just how awesome I think you all are and as an announcement to the community that Steemit is impacting lives beyond our own digital halls. Thank you!!!

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And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's non-arachnophobic iPhone

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