My husband hates spiders. Not just your average, ‘ugh, a spider’ but full blown “KILL IT DEAD, THEN KILL IT, AGAIN, JUST BECAUSE” type of dedicated hatred. His eyes gleamed when I jokingly suggested mounting the trophies of his dead foes on a plaque for all to admire.
So, anyway, one morning, he got into his truck and started it up. Now, this was back when we lived in Florida, which is the Land of Fearful Creeping Things. A small spider woke from his nap, probably hadn’t even had his coffee, yet, and slid down a line of silk to see what that disturbance was below. He was hiding, incidentally, behind the truck’s visor on the driver’s side, so, when he made his appearance to my fully alert, well-caffeinated, beloved, they were eyeball to many eyeballs. My husband was in the midst of backing the truck past my farm truck when he and Spider met. There was a millisecond when Spider swung mere centimeters back and forth in front of hubby’s eyes. Then, my husband exploded out of the truck to escape. The truck, still being in reverse, moved past my truck and the driver’s door bent backwards and scraped down the side of my farm truck before hubby realized and jumped back in to stop it. He was absolutely mortified that his fear had gotten the best of him. We got the door bent back so he could get to work and off he went, demoralized.
I called the insurance company and explained what happened. There was silence on the line. Then, the adjuster asked me, “Well, did he kill the spider?”
