Spider Guts

I have seen my fair share of spiders in Cameroon. I have seen black widows, I have seen tarantulas, I have seen daddy long legs—and just about everything in between. It was no surprise to see the giant spider in the kitchen. But it was still gross. My postmate and I were sitting in the kitchen, eating cookies, when I spotted the spider sitting on the stool’s leg. It was one of those big, hairy ones, with a fat abdomen. It was roughly the size of a baseball with its legs included. Just chillin below our water filter. It looked disgusting and it looked like it could do some damage if it wanted to. We could not let it live. That was never an option. We began debating what to use to kill it. Our shoes were quickly removed as a possibility as that would require us to get far too close to the creature. It was in a bit of a confined space, being on the stool leg, so it was going to be a bit tricky to get the force and speed to kill it without it getting away. We finally decided on an empty plastic coke bottle. After hemming and hawing and making multiple “we are so grossed out” noises, I finally stepped up and into position. As I whacked the bottle into the spider’s location, two things happened simultaneously. First, the spider’s body went leaping off in the other direction, towards the wall—the thing just shot through the air. Second, something hit the back of my neck. As expected, this second occurrence took up most of my attention. I immediately slapped my hand to the back of my neck and wiped at what I had felt land there. When I pulled my hand away, I saw a brown goo. I then commenced the classic scream and dance. I began squirming around, shouting “get it off me, get it off me!” to Elizabeth. It was a scene straight out of the movies. Looking back, it’s hilarious. At the moment, it was very far from it. The best words I can use to describe my feelings at the time: absolute repulsion. It was disgusting to realize I had spider guts on the back of my neck. Of course, by realizing there were guts on my neck, I knew the spider must be dead, or at least mostly. But the fear that worried me was that there would be a half-living, angry, dying spider on my back, oozing guts as it sought to cling to life. I was also very confused as to how the guts ended up on my back, as it went against all laws of physics. I splatted a spider in front of me and its guts ended up not only behind me, but then 180 degrees around again, on the back of my neck. It made no sense. I was still trying to process all of this, while dancing around, but Elizabeth confirmed there was no spider on me. I didn’t fully trust her at first—if its guts could defy all possibilities, why couldn’t it? But eventually, she convinced me it was only its guts, which were also located in several other locations on my shirt. After I recovered from being beyond grossed-out (let me tell you—I do not like the feel of spider guts on my bare skin), we finally realized we hadn’t found the spider itself. We were pretty sure it was dead it its guts were all over me, but we had also seen it leaping off the other way. Thus ensued a manhunt, which was finally ended after several minutes when we found its head and deflated body. Incidentally, this was the day I decided I have been in Cameroon long enough and am really looking forward to coming home.