The Fishers in La Paz, Bolivia

If you come to our apartment and go out to our courtyard patio, you’ll see a big rock on the ground.  Now, that rock normally is for propping open the screen door.  But it can also be used for other purposes!

If you turn that rock over, you will likely notice the large, black spot.

Well, it’s like this.  Um, after returning from Sorata (a trip our “travel and tourism” writer, Anne, will likely post about really soon), we found an… unexpected traveling companion, a huge wolf-spider-lookin’ thing in our big duffel bag.  Just sitting there, ready to strike (okay, more likely ready to start a family and kill all the flies in a four-mile radius).  That duffel bag wasted no time in getting zipped back up, dragged out to the patio and dumped out unceremoniously.  As a rather dramatic, minor-key (think, an especially tense scene on Lost, including lots of trombone and dissonant piano-playing) soundtrack played in my head, I nervously flipped through the clothing, a plan formulating in my head (hammer?  No, too skinny.  Book?  No, it would taint the reading experience.  Ah, YES! Big rock.  That will do nicely…).

But, as go all the best-laid plans of mice and arachnophobes, things went awry.  As I uncovered it, the spider was supposed to stand bravely before me, eight-or-so eyes blazing with intense fury and malice, ready to take its last stand in the name of brave critters everywhere.  But no.  It somehow figured out, “Hey!  This dude is way big and I’m relatively small and… I gotta get outta here!”

Then began the running (on the spider’s part) and the screaming (on my part) and the random swinging of brooms and throwing of rocks (again, my part).  The music in my skull intensified (I had hoped we could cut to a flashback or even a commercial, but life is not so kind), and the spider ran under things.  I tossed laundry aside, raised the aforementioned big rock and hurled it.

As you might expect, in such a great flurry of activity (in a relatively small space, mind you), it was not a direct hit.  The rock splintered a bit, bouncing to reveal… one leg on the ground!  Where was the offending (or victimized, if you will) arachnid?!?!  Was it crawling up my leg with its remaining seven limbs to exact its revenge?  Was I long for this world?

Okay, no.  It was lying on the floor to my right, all sad and curled up.  So, to put it out of its misery (and because I still half-expected it to strike its deadly last attack), I smushed it with the big rock.  Now it is a spot.

The music changed to sad violins as I examined the poor, dead, beautiful creature.

denouement: Some of you may think, Monster!  Why not just put the poor thing in the wild?  I agree.  Had we possessed the space to safely introduced the lovely thing into our ecosystem, hoorah.  But, alas, we live in a big city, and if we had let it go, it would have just ended up getting run over or stepped on.  So there.