Gunfight at the Spider Corral

Guest blogger: Señor Editor

Most folks who know me know that I have very few aversions. I'm open-minded, adventurous and enjoy experiencing new things. This willingness does not, however, extend to spiders. I hate the eight-legged freaks. In fact, I'm convinced that God created unabridged dictionaries for one purpose alone: to be dropped or hurled at any spider that has the misfortune to be anywhere near me.

I grew up in the countryside of southwestern Ohio, a land brimming with abundant fields, leafy deciduous forests, wonderful river valleys and, unfortunately, a LOT of large spiders. My personal nemesis was the Golden Orb Spider, a gold-and-black monstrosity that, legs and body included, could grow to about the size of a baseball.

One afternoon in my eleventh or twelfth summer, I discovered one of these suckers living in my parents' hedgerow. Obviously the thing had to die, but I had recently graduated away from dictionary lobbing and entered into the wonderful world of BB guns. I had a great BB gun, a Crossman 870 Airmaster, if memory serves, capable of shooting a BB at more than 1100 feet per second. The perfect spider killer.

I chambered a BB, pumped the gun to its maximum pressure and crept close. With the muzzle of the barrel no more than about a foot from the body of the spider, I took careful aim and gently squeezed the trigger. What I failed to notice was the chain link fence immediately behind the spider. The BB missed, hit a link of the fence, ricocheted back right at my face and pegged me right between the eyes. My interpretation of the event at the time was a tad removed from the facts, however. What I believed had happened was that I had missed the spider, and it, in its wrath, had flung itself at my face, where it was now biting me squarely between the eyes. I flung the gun away, threw myself on the ground and began rolling over and over, slapping myself in the face to a desperate attempt to remove the phantom arachnid. It was only once I got my heat under control that I realized that I had managed to shoot myself in the face via the ricocheting bullet and that the spider was still safely ensconced in the hedgerow. Needless to say, the spider and I reached a state of détente.