Hope you like spider stories!

It’s no surprise to anyone who knows me that I have a bit of a difficulty in dealing with spiders. For reasons I can’t explain, I find them to be the most disgusting and creepy little creatures on this planet. I’d rather swim in a pool of locusts then sit face to face with a big, hairy spider.

Over the past couple years though I’ve come across some scary bugs. I’ve met distant cousins of tarantulas in Nicaragua (thankfully I befriended a Nicaraguan man who ‘spider-scanned’ the shower before I’d venture in there) and I’ve also stumbled upon those crazy, Georgian jumping spiders who always make showering just that bit more eventful.

As the weather is getting warmer, the spiders have really been coming out to say ‘hello’. The other night I saw a huge spider in my room, in fact when I first saw it I mistook it for a crab. Uh yeah, it was that big. I quickly scrambled to get my flip flop to send the crab-spider to meet his other friends in crab-spider heaven (aka my hell) but he got away from me. I stood still for a minute waiting for him to show his face but I believe he was on to me and took cover in my backpack. After I mustered up the courage I shook out my backpack half-hoping slash half-dreading that my new friend would pop on out.

As my paranoia overtook me, I called for Nini to help me find the eight-legged little vagabond playing hide and seek in my room. After five minutes of searching and no signs of the little bugger, Nini decided I would have to sleep in her bed with her because there would be no way I’d be able to sleep with a crab spider roommate.

As we were snuggling and getting ready to sleep, I noticed I had three missed calls and two frantic text messages from Melissa. I called her back and Melissa told me she couldn’t sleep because she found a cockroach in the hallway. I tried to tell her to not be afraid of a little black bug, but of course I realized I was just a pot calling a pan black.

At least Melissa was still in her bedroom; I had to take shelter in my little sister’s bed.

Nini advised Melissa that she should just come on over to our house and the three of us could all just sleep in her bed. Granted, it was 1:30am when Nini advised this- a bit too late to start a twenty minute journey across town to avoid a bug. After I got off the phone with Melissa, Nini asked me what a cockroach was. It took me a second, but the summer before I came to Georgia I completed the Byki Georgian language course (it’s like a free downloadable Rosetta Stone) and remembered that ‘t’arak’ani’ was one of the animals taught in the program.

As soon as I said the word ‘t’arak’ani’ Nini looked at me terrified. All of a sudden she was convinced that a cockroach was somewhere in our room. Until 2 in the morning we were holding hands in bed, convinced our respective scary insect would join us.

The good news is that Nini and I make a good pair. I’m not afraid of cockroaches, and she’s not afraid of spiders. Theoretically, we could be each others’ knights in shining armor.

The same is true for Melissa and me. Like just last week, we were at a friend’s barbeque in Kutaisi when Melissa noticed a cockroach on the wall. Just as I standing on top of the couch ready to clobber the bug, our other friend said, “That’s not a cockroach, it’s a spider.”

Without a word, I climbed down off the couch and Melissa climbed onto it. Upon Melissa’s inspection she noticed it was some type of creepy, flying centipede so she too climbed down and our other friend climbed on top of the couch. Just as he took a whack at the guy, he ended up falling off the couch, landing incredibly awkwardly and hurting himself.

So, how many Americans does it take to kill a mutant centipede-spider-cockroach? Apparently four.