“I don’t think those horror movies are fiction,” I shared, watching as she nodded at me. “In fact, I think what they didn’t say was that they based it on real-life events.” Again, she nodded in agreement, biting her lip as she looked at the door to my bedroom. “Shouldn’t they warn you? Like a health warning?”
Just then, the men came back into the living room, and Dave took Liv out of Tabby’s arms. “Well, I believe that was a Brown Recluse,” he told me. “I think it was the legs that made it look as big as it was, or maybe it was carrying eggs?”
“Maybe it had just eaten a cat,” Tabby mumbled, rubbing her arms and looking around the place.
“I think you’re wrong,” I hedged. “There was nothing reclusive about that spider. It was bold, pissed, outgoing, and anti-social all at the same time.”
“Maybe its scientific name is actually ‘A Big Mofo’?” Tabby suggested.
“Is it poisonous?” I asked, flinching when I felt something touch my arm, and then calming down again when I saw that it was just the sleeve of my t-shirt. I’d snagged one just as Dave ran into my bedroom earlier so I wasn’t standing in front of everyone in just my bra, thank God.
Nodding, Dave started to move slowly from side-to-side, rocking Olivia and gently stroking her head. “I texted a photo of it to my friend who works for the Texas Poison Center Network, and he said its venom can make you feel unwell, kill off the skin at the site of the bite…”
“I knew it,” I shouted, jumping up from the couch. “I knew that if it bit my vagina I’d end up losing half of it.”
Both men stood staring at me wide eyed, but my sister got it. “Totally. Then you’d be a one-lipped wonder. Can you imagine going into the ER with the venom eating away and having to explain that?”
“That’s exactly what I thought before Ellis got here!” It was a relief someone understood the danger my poor bajinga had been in.
“Wouldn’t have been a Seal anymore,” she pointed out.
“A seal?” Ellis asked, reminding us that the men could hear what we were saying. A quick look in his direction showed both men watching us with the same confused expressions on their faces.
I’d blame what I did next on the PTSS – Post Traumatic Spider Stress. “Yeah, we were thinking up unique names for our vaginas after I had Livvy. I went with Seal for mine, because of the song Kiss From A Rose, and Tabby’s is Elvis because of…”
“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” both men groaned at the same time.
“You had to be there at the time,” Tabby sniffed, and turned her back on the men, a deep red blush on her face. Yeah, once she’d had someone staring up her Elvis while she pushed a head out of it, she’d get over that embarrassment. “What are you going to do now?”
“What do you mean?” Was there a process to go through after you shot a spider that was holding you hostage?
“She means, are you going to get the house fumigated?” Dave explained, looking down at my sleeping daughter. “If it had bitten Olivia…”
“I need a spider exorcist,” I gasped, looking for my phone and remembering it was still at the scene of the crime. “Exterminator, honey,” Tabby corrected, pulling her own phone out and tapping on the screen. “Where there’s one there might be more, so we need to get your house fumigated.”
As a rule of thumb, I hated killing animals. I didn’t kill flies, I usually caught a spider with a glass and a piece of paper and then tipped them outside (unless it was a spider that would have needed a bucket instead of a glass, obviously). Moths and butterflies I did the same with, being careful not to knock the magic flying powder off their wings so they couldn’t fly anymore. I was just gentle with them all – well, unless it we were talking about mosquitos, ants, and big ass mother fucking spiders. For that last one, I wanted anything that could possibly cause Liv harm while she slept out of my house, so an exterminator was going to either have to kill them all, or I was moving.
“Hello?” Tabby said into her phone. “Hi, I wonder if you could help us out, please? My sister had a chicken sized…”
“Cow sized,” I interrupted, getting a glare from her.
“Ok, excuse my language, but she had a big ass mother fucking spider that was the size of a farmyard animal in her house tonight, and we think it was a Brown Recluse. We actually had to shoot it,” she told the person on the other end of her phone. There was a pause as she listened, and then she whispered, “Yes, I said shoot.” There was another pause. “Yes, with a gun.” Pause. “And a bullet, yes.” After the next pause, she lost her patience. “Yes, it was shot by a gun with a bullet. Did you not hear me say it was the size of a farm animal?”