This isn't Charlotte's Web
Hi, I’m Sasha - and I write short stories about traveling in an RV. The rumors are true. We bought a house! In the Southern part of Tennesee, we found a place we’re going to call home, or at least home base, for the foreseeable future. Our motorhome is staying here with us, which is good since we got it stuck in mud.
Don’t despair. I have no shortage of travel stories and we aren’t giving up traveling completely; we now have a house with no furniture that we’ll be hanging our hats at for a bit.
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When I lived in Bend, Oregon, I sat in our living room on a warm summer day, reading a book. Across the carpet, a scorpion scurried with his ill-weighted tail behind him. He matched the flooring with his sand-colored body. I didn’t even watch to see where he went, much to my parents’ annoyance, but instead tucked my feet beneath me and continued to read. For all we know, he still lives in my parent’s living room twenty years later. Just normal high-desert things.
Yesterday I acquainted myself with some of our land. Tens of tiny spiders jumped among the ground cover, scurrying to get out of the way of my tennis shoes. Their little bodies catapulted from grass blades to bramble pieces. I hadn’t seen them the day before when I’d fought blackberries to uncover some of the property with a brush hog.
Rain had accompanied us overnight, and the moisture must have driven them out of their hiding places.
The little spiders reminded me of a late-night walk from a year or two ago. Somewhere in Arkansas, sometime in the summer heat. The air had weight to it even in the blackness of the night.
The dog, Bernadette, and I made our way through the unfamiliar campground roads while I used my phone as a lamp. We passed near a nondescript shadow tree. She suddenly backed up, reversing as anxiously as I do when driving the motorhome. Throwing back her head, she contorted her body to bite down on her own fur.
“Okay, okay,” I said to her, “let’s go!”
My dog is notoriously allergic to bug bites. Her face has been known to swell up like a shar-pei after getting stung by a honeybee. The solution? Bright pink Benadryl, if we can get it into her system before the allergen sets in. Otherwise: vet trip.
We were 45 minutes from absolutely nowhere. Vets included.
As I hustled her to the RV, I bent to pet her to encourage her to keep up the pace. Thick webs clung to my hand: a spiderweb stronger than any silk I’d ever encountered. It held on like twine. Arkansas, what kind of bugs hide in you at night?
We’d walked a hundred or so feet. And then, there he was. Out of the inky dark of the night, he emerged, walking down the road directly beside me, startling both myself and the dog. Eight legs and all. Not a foot away from me.
A tarantula.
Not a big spider that I’m exaggerating about. A hairy-bodied tarantula. He walked parallel to me, down the middle of the paved road. Walked is the wrong word. Sauntered, like he owned the freaking forest in Arkansas.
Remember when I mentioned scorpions, and how relaxed I was by one scampering by? Not so with tarantulas, I learned.
As Bernadette lunged to sniff at it, I grabbed all 60-plus pounds of her and raced her to the motorhome a few sites away, horrified that in that miniature moment, she’d been bit.
Blubbering mouthfuls of nonsensical words, I spewed the story to Jeremiah as he dried off from his shower.
“She’s fine,” he said, as I shoved allergy medicine into pill pockets and then into Bernadette’s mouth.
Her shiny black fur reflected the thick white webs she had walked into, and I grabbed a rag to begin wiping her off, the stickiness clinging to the stained towel.
Within minutes, the black dog was sleeping soundly in her overstuffed bed, and I heard a knock at our door.
It was the tarantula.
Just kidding, it was a fellow camper. Now, here, I can’t remember what they wanted - maybe to see if we wanted a beer or simply to chat. What I do remember is thinking that behind the happy camper the tarantula bided his time, giggling in spider speak, waiting for me to exit in the morning. That night, he met me in my nightmares.
Yet, in the morning, there was no tarantula to be seen, and all our dog had to show for her strange interaction with a different spider was a welt on her hind leg...but I think we know that wasn’t her last encounter with wildlife.
Thanks for traveling with me - I’ll be back next week with another short travel story.
Sasha
Down the rabbit hole:
I learned that night that tarantulas are not as poisonous as they are scary. They can kill dogs and cats, but Bernie would likely have been fine if she were to have been bitten. There have been no known human fatalities linked to the poison from tarantulas. However, gangrene ulcers and thus blood poisoning from tarantula bites have led to human deaths. So, you know, if you get bit, go to the doctor.