Things That Go Tap in the Night

It was a dark and stormy night. Okay, so not so much stormy as mildly cloudy, but still. It was late, and I still had much work to do. Hubby and the pups were making too much racket for my creative side to be happy with, so I banished them to the top floor of the house while I retreated to the basement.

The air was cool, but the space blessedly quiet. Finally I was able to get into the groove of writing, and before too long I was deep in the story, my surroundings falling away as I immersed myself in Regency England. I was typing happily away when a sudden scratching sound brought me screeching back to the present.

Scratchy scratchy scratchy…

There it was again! I froze, my heart beating in my ears as I evaluated the situation. I knew Kirk and the dogs were still upstairs—the sound of the basement door opening is unmistakable, so I knew they couldn't have sneaked downstairs.

Scratchy scratchy scratchy…

Oh God, there was something down there with me. Right. Behind. Me. I swallowed, my whole body rigidly tense. It was going to be a mouse. I just knew it. I was going to turn around and a freaking little mouse was going to dart away, escaping into some unseen crevasse and leaving me unable to sleep for days.

Scratchy scratchy scratchy…

There was nothing for it; I had to turn around. Without a doubt something was there walking behind me, and be it mouse, rat, or something even more sinister, I had to know what it was. Taking a bracing breath, I slowly, carefully swiveled in my chair, spinning until I could see the ground directly behind me and then…

OH MY GOD!!! OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!! It wasn’t a mouse or even a rat, it was a SPIDER GINORMOUS ENOUGH FOR ME TO HEAR HIM WALKING BEHIND ME!!

In utter horror, I flailed around looking for something on my desk substantial enough to smite him from the face of the earth. Generally I prefer the live and let live philosophy, but once you are big enough to wear tap shoes and pound out some Fred Astaire moves, I’m sorry but you gotta die. Immediately.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t wearing any shoes and all I really had on my desk were loose papers. I found a pack of index cards, but I couldn’t risk him bench-pressing them off and coming after me.

Meanwhile, I’m screaming at the top of my lungs, for once in my life perfectly okay with sounding like a six year old girl. I can hear the dogs scrambling down the stairs and pacing back and forth in front of the basement door, but damn if they hadn’t opposable thumbs to open the door and come rescue me. Kirk, however, with is wonderfully dextrous hands and multitude of weapons to choose from upstairs (butcher knife, anyone), is nowhere to be found. He would later claim that he couldn’t hear me, but I firmly believe that he heard the I’m-about-to-be-eaten-by-Aragog scream and decided to sit that one out.

The spider started to move at this point, looking like nothing so much as Thing from the Addam’s family, only slightly more hairy and WAY more creepy. At last my hands find something much more substantial on my desk—my go-to research book, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew. Its shiny, unblemished cover glinted in the light, and I paused in indecision.

And then he moved again. Towards me.

And I threw the book at him.

Literally.

So therein ends the tale of the tap-dancing spider and his death by Charles Dickens. I’m beginning to think living out in the sticks isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Overdramatic snakes? Check. Radioactive spiders? Check. Please next time can it simply be an ax murderer or a boogy man – in other words, something less horrifying?

What is your most heebie-jeebie inducing critter story? And really, have you ever in your life heard of a spider so big you could hear him walking behind you?? *shivers*

For today’s recipe, I thought I’d find a recipe both yummy and tasteless under the circumstances. How do you think I did? ;)

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And because I thought a tribute was in order...