Fourth of July is always a crazy time for me. For the past two years I’ve hosted what is becoming the Annual Frenchy Family Bash. This year, in addition to most of the clan coming over for the festivities, some friends in the middle of a cross country road trip stopped by for a few days and added to the insanity.

I was upstairs looking for something when – BZZT! -I felt a little shock on my arm. I ignored it until – BZZT! –I felt it again.

What the hell? I turned and looked and there was the biggest, fattest, ugliest and meanest looking spider I’ve ever seen in my life happily biting away at me, and I wasn’t even eating any curds and whey!

Shit. Though there aren’t any really poisonous spiders in my area, I knew my cross country friends had been camping in Yellowstone. Did this little uninvited guest hitchhike with them to my house? Was this six-eyed bastard really a cold-blooded, poisonous killer?

My fingers started tingling and I broke out in a sweat. Suddenly, I craved flies. I started to grow three more sets of eyes and six more legs. For unknown reasons the words ‘SOME PIG‘ flashed through my brain. What the hell was this thing anyway? What had happened to me? A frantic search on the internet brought up several possibilities, some bad, some less so.

(As a side note, if you ever find yourself bored and in need of a good case of the willies – Google spider images… guaranteed hours of creepy-crawly disgusting fun.)

Could the creepy arachnid that had just poisoned me be the dreaded Brown Recluse, who’s bite causes skin necrosis? Or the almost-as-bad Hobo spider, something I’d never even heard of before? Looking through gruesome picture after gruesome spider picture, the search narrowed down to the Marbled Orb Spider, a common little pain in the arm. Even though this evil beast looks like the spawn of Hell, as it turns out, it’s bite isn’t all that bad.

Marbled Orb Spider – Maximus Disgustimus

The tingling, pain, extra eyes and appendages went away after a while, but every now and then I crave a good fly or two. Needless to say I’m still waiting for my webslinging superpowers to develop.

Until then I will do my best to avoid sitting on tuffets.

Author: frenchy