Fred

To provide some back story for those of you who don't know, one of Mike's least favorite things in the world is spiders. He hates all insects, but especially spiders, and I'm always the one in charge of getting rid of any bugs that he sees. They typically don't bother me at all; as a matter of fact, I used to love them when I was little.

Awhile ago, I was cooking something on the element, which was on the floor in the kitchen. I let it boil for awhile, turned off the light to the room, and left. Later, I came back, flipped on the switch, and noticed something on the wall right next to me move so I jumped back. It looked like a starfish on the wall, and was about the size of my hand so I walked out and told Mike not to go in the kitchen. Of course, he never listens to me, and wanted to see what it was so ran in, freaked out, took a picture and ran out. We zoomed in on the picture and realized it was a huuuge hairy spider, that looked exactly like a tarantula. Mike ran to the bedroom and curled up in the fetail position on the bed, while I attempted to get rid of the spider. I grabbed our big squeegee mop that we clean the floors with, and tried to squish it but missed and the spider went running. He disappeared and we never saw it again. Mireille said she'd seen the spider before, and joked that she calls him Fred and there's nothing to worry about, he's her friend.

Fast forward 2 months. The other day we were both complaining about how eaten up we're getting from bugs, and either there's bugs in our bed or the bed net isn't effective. I joked to him that I bet there are spiders in our room, which Mike got mad about. Hours later, when we were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, Mike went to our room to get the bug spray. He walked out quickly, his face pale white, and said "Oooook...." I freaked out, thinking there was a severed head in there or something, judging by his reaction. I asked what was wrong, and he said, "Fred's back... and he's RIGHT ABOVE THE BED!" Sure enough, looking even larger than last time, there was the spider. We didn't know what to do to get rid of him, so Mike took a bunch of pictures as we tried to figure it out.

I didn't want to just try to squish him, because if I got him we'd have a huge spider carcass to dispose of. I also didn't want to just scare him away, because I knew I wouldn't sleep, knowing he could come back. Usually at home when there's a bug to get rid of, I capture it in a cup, slide a piece of paper to cover it, and calmly walk it outside, but this thing even freaked the hell out of me and I knew I wouldnt be able to stay calm with this big tarantula right in my hands. Hmmm... Lightbulb. We took the squeegee mop, secured a huge tupperware to it with duct tape, and then put a layer of tape, sticky-side-up, on it. The rationale was that it was a big enough surface area so that it would be easy to hit him, and the tape would capture him, whether he was alive or dead. (Don't worry, we got this all on video) Long story short, I missed, Fred went running, and I let out a scream. Jeanette, the housekeeper for our landlord and the sweetest girl ever, came to see what was wrong. We showed her and she jumped on the bed and started swatting at it with her BARE HANDS. She then found some tissue and somehow was able to squish the thing and get rid of it, and just walked nonchalantly out of the house. Because of the language barrier, we couldn't begin to thank her enough and she's probably thinking how crazy we are for freaking out so much.

The kicker is that when we went back and looked at the pictures, we realized this one was missing a leg... and when we looked at pictures of the original Fred, we realized that this one had all 8 legs. Soooo we have a tarantula infestation in our house. I haven't gotten a good night's sleep since I've been here, and this will not help.