Years ago, I had a summer job at a USDA Cotton Research Farm. One afternoon, we were working in one of the massive barns, picking cotton seeds from burlap bags. It was a lazy, hot afternoon, but we were comfortable on big stacks of burlap, and the conversation — ranging from boys to movies to what we’d pack in our bomb shelters — was most entertaining. The harsh sunlight was blocked by thick, wooden walls and filtered through dust that sparkled in the air, and with two-story doors open on both sides of the barn, a breeze kept the Phoenix heat under control. Eventually, we found ourselves fighting sleep.
In this foggy state, I felt a little tickle on my upper thigh and reached down to scratch it. My hand cupped itself around a lump in my jeans — a bulge as big as my palm.
I was instantly awake! I leaped up, pulled the denim away from my thigh and shook. A wolf spider dropped onto the barn floor and scurried away.BOY, was I squicked out! I shuddered for a good hour.
My supervisor, a man who’d worked at the farm for 20 years, laughed and laughed. He said one time, he’d had a wolf spider climb up the inside of his jeans like that, and he’d just dropped his pants in the middle of the field.
I vowed that next time, that’s exactly what I would do.
Fast forward to today: I’m driving home from Pilates in my sweats when my thigh itched. I reached down to scratch and found a lump under my sweats. Much smaller — maybe the size of a young tick — but still! Guess what I did?
Oh, yeah! I pinched that tick between my fingers to keep him from getting lost in my underwear (eeeuuwww!), and pulled off the road as fast as I found. It was a little tricky unbuckling my seatbelt — I had to switch the tick to my other hand — but I did it in gold-medal time.
Then I pulled off my sweats as fast as I could, right there by the side of the road, devil cares who saw!
The joke was on me. It was a lump of hair and dryer lint, rolled together and stuck to the fleece.
But it could have been a bug!
April 5, 2008 at 12:33 am |
Oh my that is a terrible but funny story, and I don’t blame you for ripping your pants off, I would have to.
April 5, 2008 at 7:06 am |
Some memories just stick with us, don’t they?
I’d hav done the same thing.
April 5, 2008 at 7:12 am |
oh I am terrified of wolf spiders! my mom and I found one under our tv stand once and we threw a bowl over it and stacked books on top of it and had to call a friend of ours to put the thing outside. Both of us were too scared to go near it!
April 5, 2008 at 8:58 am |
Ugh!!! Oh, that made me shudder. A few weeks ago, I was waiting for the bus and the wind was blowing tendrils of my hair against my neck, and it was ITchy, so I finally reached up to scratch it only to find that it wasn’t tendrils of hair, but a BEE that had gotten caught in the collar of my jacket, which I had flipped up. ACK! Everyone at the bus stop got to watch me freak out and try to free this bee without getting stung.
April 5, 2008 at 12:02 pm |
That picture… BLECH!!! I can’t believe you had one of those in your pants. You poor thing!
Funny story, though.
April 6, 2008 at 10:40 am |
You had me rolling with this one. Almost fell off my chair. I’ve never heard of wolf spiders, but I think you did the absolute best thing, and probably entertained a few random drivers. One of my daughters HATES spiders, I’m sending her this link.
April 7, 2008 at 5:57 pm |
Oh my GOD! How did he get that far up without you feeling it??
I lived in a cool loft once. Its only drawback were black widow spiders every now and then. I found one once, webbed in the corner of a room about knee high. We had experience with them running if you knocked them down, so he ran and got the fattest book he could find, put it in the corner of the room above the spider and dropped it so it would fall on the web, take her down and squash her.
Which it did. Then we laughed and laughed because the big fat book had a big fat title: For Whom The Bell Tolls.
It tolls for THEE big ugly poison spider! It tolls for THEE!!
April 9, 2008 at 6:33 am |
ROFL! now spiders don’t bother me much but roaches? roaches are another story entirely. we have those big palmetto bug things down here and they’re SMART! for example, if you spray them with raid, they fly RIGHT at you….i suppose they thing that if they’re gonna die, you’re going with them!
years ago, about the time liberty was in kindergarten, i was coming home one night from a homemaking meeting at church. as i got out of the car and approached the back door, a palmetto bug flew at me and attached itself to my stockings! (they have hairy little legs that stick to EVERYTHING) in a flash, i had my dress pulled up to my waist scrambling to unhook my garter (remember THEM?) screaming all the while. i’m sure the neighbors are still scandalized over that one!
then there was the time when after being out mowing the pasture one afternoon i found a tick firmly attached to my boob. after i threw up, and quit shaking, i painted it with green nail polish (isn’t that supposed to make them let go?) and ended up having to ask poor danny to remove it when he got home from work (i threw up again) and he’s never let me live down the emerald green tick next to my nipple! blechhhhhhhhhhhh!
April 13, 2008 at 6:13 am |
A couple of years ago, I was standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, when I felt something tickle my leg. I thought that I had dripped some water onto my leg, so, with my hands still in the dishwater, I rubbed my other knee over the tickly spot to wipe up the drip. I felt something crunch between my knees. I looked down just in time to see a crushed scorpion fall to the floor! I can’t believe I didn’t get stung.