A Massacre Has Occurred

Today I lived through the most awful thing that has happened to me since I arrived in Cambodia – more awful than amoebas, more terrifying than my first bike ride in 5 o’clock traffic in downtown Phnom Penh, more horrific than my recent bout with India’s famed Delhi belly. It was a massacre. And I was doing the killing. But don’t feel sorry for the slain – if anything, feel proud of my courage. After all, each of the victims had eight legs and if that isn’t enough to carry you far from the aim of my Raid, then it’s evolutions way of saying you deserve to die.



But honestly, it was horrific. As many of you know, I have an unexplainable and, some say, unreasonable fear of spiders. To many of you this is humorous or endearing – to those of you genetically prone to the same all-encompassing dread, you know it to be serious and well grounded. Anything with more than four legs is better off dead in my book.

Now to the massacre – the she-devil was crouched in my bathroom, fangs glaring at me, awaiting my arrival, to devour me whole. I happen to glimpse her before she could pounce (it’s hard to miss something the size of a golf ball and as black as death on a white tile floor…) and I recoiled faster than she expected. Nor did she expect the entire can of Cambodian Raid to be sprayed in her direction from a good 5 feet away (better safe than sorry – they do have jumping spiders you know). It was about a minute into my fog of cancer-inducing spraying that I notice the odd lump beneath her. About that time a few dozen black dots exploded from this odd lump, followed by a few hundred more (I’m gagging just thinking about it, not to mention the goosebumps…). Yes – the witch was in the process of LAYING her offspring in my BATHROOM. I sprayed until I became worried that I might actually be causing cancer for a few blocks and then watched for a good ten minutes (again from a safe 5 feet – they say the small ones are the worst…) to make sure that nothing was moving. After a “I can’t believe that just freakin’ happened” dance, I decided it was safe to enter the bathroom (after one more good fogging – of the entire apartment) and wash them down the drain. Needless to say, Mommacita was too large for a simple drain and it took me a full half hour to work up the courage to pick her up using my long-handled scrub brush and flush her down the toilet (five times just to be safe…).

They should give badges of courage for such accomplishments! How am I to sleep in that room tonight? (With the Raid can by my side, no doubt!) I considered running downstairs and buying a direct flight home until I remembered that in the far too recent past, my mother witnessed the grandfather of all spiders emerging from what I once considered my safe haven of a bedroom (It was a tarantula in our HOME in Tulia). It appears no place is safe for me to lay my head…

And eventually, I’ll write about something much more compelling like my recent trip to India…But for now I must go upstairs and fog my apartment once more before bedtime. G’Night!