I take a lot of walks in the summer, which was what I did on Sunday afternoon. My grandpa had come home with my family to eat lunch with us, and at the point where this story begins, it was that post-lunch time where everyone has gone to their separate corners of the house to either watch TV or to take a nap.
Little did I suspect what was waiting for me at home as I wrapped up my walk.
While I was gone, my mom had gone into the upstairs bathroom and spotted a wad of brown hair in the shower drain. There are three girls in our house who have long brown hair, so finding a clump of hair in the shower drain was not unusual. Thinking nothing of it, my mom reached into the tub to pick up the clump of hair.
It was then that she realized it wasn’t hair she held in her hand. It was a big ol’ spider.
What does one do when they accidentally pick up a big spider? The correct response is to chuck said spider across the room. However, upon closer inspection, my mom discovered that the spider was dead. So, she picked it up with a napkin, and her first thought was: “I should show Kenzi.”
As some of you may or may not know, I developed a love of spiders last summer. I started naming the grass spiders that lived on the outside of our house, and gradually, they became my creepy little babies. I checked in on them every day and stopped to talk to them. Ever since then, small spiders haven’t seemed quite as scary as they used to be. I have even called tiny jumping spiders cute.
It was as my mom was walking down the stairs in search of me that I walked into the house. Perfect timing, right?
She drew me out of the kitchen by saying, “Kenzi, come see what I found in the shower!”
Poor, unsuspecting daughter that I was, I met her on the stairs and saw this:
Meet Sauron the spider. He looks like he crawled straight out of Mordor. And yes, I realize that we missed a giant spider LotR reference, but we had already named a spider Shelob last summer. Couldn’t have a repeat.
After freaking me out (because there’s only so far my weird spider love will go), my mom set this guy on a counter in our kitchen. As grossed out as we both were, we were also insanely curious. Where I live, you don’t often see spiders this big. We took pictures, got out a magnifying glass, and measured it with a ruler (its body was about 1 inch in length). In our efforts to identify what kind of spider Sauron was, my mom even got a flat paper towel and flipped his body over. She also put her finger right next to him for scale.
Right after my mom laid a quarter down next to Sauron (again, for scale), I heard my mom gasp and say, “It’s not dead!”
To which my response was, “What?!” I could no longer see the spider since I had sprinted to the other side of the kitchen as soon as she said that.
“I saw it move! It stretched out a leg!”
Cue the hysterical screaming from me. To give you guys some perspective: we don’t live in a huge house, but there are two levels plus a basement. My grandpa, who was in the downstairs bathroom at the time, heard my screaming through two walls and a closed door. And later, my brother said to me, “So, I take it the spider was still alive? I was on a call upstairs when I heard the screaming.”
Yes, Sauron was still alive. My mom carefully picked up the paper towel and delivered him outside to the front yard. He definitely wasn’t 100% healthy, though. This is where things get icky.
Some context first:
The girlfriend of one of my brothers lives with us (one of the three women in the house who has long brown hair). Unlike me, she has zero love of spiders. Not even cute little jumping spiders. She also volunteers at our local hospital on Sundays, and she doesn’t get home until the middle of the afternoon. On this particular Sunday, she came home and took a shower in the upstairs bathroom.
It was not long after that that my mom discovered Sauron half drowned in the tub.
Meaning that Sauron and my brother’s girlfriend were almost definitely in the shower at the same time.
With each other.
And she had no idea.
When I told my brother that we didn’t kill the spider--just dumped him out in the lawn--his eyes got big and he whispered to me, “We never speak of this again!”
So, everyone in the house knows about the spider incident except for his girlfriend, and we’re all sworn to secrecy. The only reason I feel confident posting this story is because I know for a fact that she’s not on any social media platforms. And I’m 99.99% positive that she doesn’t read this blog.
The takeaway that my mom got from this incident was: “We found out how far your weird spider love goes. And it ends at big-ass spider.”