Arachnophonic
It’s interesting, really, what events I find I’m able to sleep through and what events I’m not able to sleep through. As it goes, I’m not able to sleep through the sensation of something crawling into my ear while I sleep.
Again, it was while I lived out in the boonies behind the pecan orchard in Bumph Huck, Georgia, when earlyearly one dark morning I awoke in a terror as I felt some THING crawling into my right ear, and was overcome with a dread worse than that of death as I realized it was in too far for me to stop it.
I slapped at the side of my head, tilted my ear downward while pounding on the left side of my head in the hopes that, whatever it was would fall out.
The entire time, I was in a full-body shudder of spastic proportions, a full-blown panic as I didn’t know WHAT it was or what it was DOING in my ear! All I could think of was that episode of (I think) Star Trek where all those Enterprise crew members you never saw before had their brains eaten by some insidious insects that entered hungry and exited sated through the ears of their host buffets.
And then the sensation of crawling in my ear stopped, followed by quiet, and then followed by a purring vibration. OH GOD! It was DRILLING! It was going to punch through to my brain any second now and start gorging its little self on my grey matter and by daylight I’d be babbling non-sentences at my dog!
After a few minutes the purring stopped. Returned intermittently, and then stopped all together.
I made several futile attempts to look into my ear using only one mirror. If I had an ear syringe I would have used it, but I was fresh out of ear syringes.
I debated with myself. Does this warrant a trip to the emergency room? Is whatever it is sucking brain cells through a straw-like proboscis as I think, my capacity to do so ebbing ever so unnoticeably away? Has it already left my head?
With the quiet in my ear, I calmed down and thought rationally. Whatever it is is now resting contentedly…or died in there. So I decided I would go back to bed, try to sleep, and if I could feel it moving around again in the morning, I would go to the emergency room and have it extracted.
Surprisingly, I fell asleep. When my alarm went off I awoke and lay quietly to try to hear any movement inside. Nothing. I returned to the bathroom mirror and tugged on my earlobe and pressed a fingertip into the opening of the ear canal, forming a seal and pulling outward, hoping the suction would do something positive.
Still, nothing came out on my finger or into the outer ear. Just as I was agreeing with myself that it was time to go to the emergency room, I looked down to the front edge of the bathroom washbasin and saw a little black dot. Upon closer inspection I could tell that the little black dot was actually a little brown spider, its body all curled and caked in earwax, dead. The poor little thing had crawled into the warm little hole in my head only to be trapped in the secretory quagmire within. The purring vibrations I felt and heard must have been its little legs trying desperately to beat an escape, but, mired in cerumen, the more it struggled, the more thoroughly it was encased, and soon, death.
I experienced one more gentle quivering full-body shudder, and threw the poor little thing in the garbage.
The more I think about it, the more I’m struck that, with all the places I’ve been, in all the places I’ve slept, it hasn’t occurred more than this one time that something has crawled into my head for a look around.
And maybe it has happened more than once, but whatever came in looked around and saw nothing inspiring, and so left again.
And maybe I’m not surprised, after all.
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
A Northern Boy's Tales of the Deep South, part 2
Arachnophobic Angel
I grew up thinking that animals, though capable of great intelligence, some even more so than we believe them capable, hit a ceiling where reason and sensibility are beyond them. They live at the level of instinct and the drive to eat. Thus, as my thinking goes, they don’t get the creeps over silly phobias, such as needles or the sight of blood or a scalpel slicing open an infected, pus-oozing limb.
Little did I know.
Angel had been playing outside somewhere on "my" 32 acres in Bumph Huck, Georgia, one particularly lovely summer day, but she had grown tired of it, or had become curious about what might be going on indoors (read: what I might have been eating that she could possibly benefit from if some fell on the floor), so she pawed at the door, begging to come in.
I opened the door and she looked up at me. As I looked down at her I noticed a familiar shape on the floor just beyond the threshold from me, practically between Angel’s front paws: a large spider. If memory serves me, its size, including leg span, would have covered most of my palm…had I the balls to let it be there! Say, roughly, 2-1/2 to three inches in diameter – not monstrously huge, but larger than your average live-in-a-hole-catching-flies-in-a-web spider. It definitely was not a "Daddy Long-Legs."
I’m not particularly afraid of or creeped out by spiders – though a story about that is coming later – so I simply shifted my focus from Angel to the spider and marveled mildly at it. Though an intelligent dog, Angel never had the smarts to look in the direction I was pointing, but instead looked at the hand I was pointing with, as that’s usually what held the object of her interest. Imagine my surprise, then, when she looked to where I was looking. She bent her head down and found the spider idling there between her paws.
And Angel S P A Z Z E D !! She frantically lifted one paw, then the other, in an effort to keep her feet away from the spider, resulting in a hilarious little dance that lasted about one second, and then she literally leapt backwards! The spider, on the other hand, never moved.
I burst out laughing at my hapless dog! She was actually FREAKED OUT by the spider just being there. Her little freaked doggie dance was every bit as pathetically hilarious as my snake-induced quivering full-body shudder(s). But I wasn’t laughing at her as much as I was at the realization that she, a dog, displayed an aversion to spiders! Of course, the freaked doggie dance was all hers; pure Angel!
I don’t know if a dog can understand laughter, what it means is going on inside the head and body of a human. They can understand anger, particularly if it’s directed at them, but laughter, I don’t know. She did seem a little embarrassed for a few minutes afterward. Certainly I accept any skepticism at my use of that word, as it ascribes a human emotion to a lowly beast. But she did walk around sheepishly for a little while after the incident.
**sigh** I sure miss that goofy girl.
I grew up thinking that animals, though capable of great intelligence, some even more so than we believe them capable, hit a ceiling where reason and sensibility are beyond them. They live at the level of instinct and the drive to eat. Thus, as my thinking goes, they don’t get the creeps over silly phobias, such as needles or the sight of blood or a scalpel slicing open an infected, pus-oozing limb.
Little did I know.
Angel had been playing outside somewhere on "my" 32 acres in Bumph Huck, Georgia, one particularly lovely summer day, but she had grown tired of it, or had become curious about what might be going on indoors (read: what I might have been eating that she could possibly benefit from if some fell on the floor), so she pawed at the door, begging to come in.
I opened the door and she looked up at me. As I looked down at her I noticed a familiar shape on the floor just beyond the threshold from me, practically between Angel’s front paws: a large spider. If memory serves me, its size, including leg span, would have covered most of my palm…had I the balls to let it be there! Say, roughly, 2-1/2 to three inches in diameter – not monstrously huge, but larger than your average live-in-a-hole-catching-flies-in-a-web spider. It definitely was not a "Daddy Long-Legs."
I’m not particularly afraid of or creeped out by spiders – though a story about that is coming later – so I simply shifted my focus from Angel to the spider and marveled mildly at it. Though an intelligent dog, Angel never had the smarts to look in the direction I was pointing, but instead looked at the hand I was pointing with, as that’s usually what held the object of her interest. Imagine my surprise, then, when she looked to where I was looking. She bent her head down and found the spider idling there between her paws.
And Angel S P A Z Z E D !! She frantically lifted one paw, then the other, in an effort to keep her feet away from the spider, resulting in a hilarious little dance that lasted about one second, and then she literally leapt backwards! The spider, on the other hand, never moved.
I burst out laughing at my hapless dog! She was actually FREAKED OUT by the spider just being there. Her little freaked doggie dance was every bit as pathetically hilarious as my snake-induced quivering full-body shudder(s). But I wasn’t laughing at her as much as I was at the realization that she, a dog, displayed an aversion to spiders! Of course, the freaked doggie dance was all hers; pure Angel!
I don’t know if a dog can understand laughter, what it means is going on inside the head and body of a human. They can understand anger, particularly if it’s directed at them, but laughter, I don’t know. She did seem a little embarrassed for a few minutes afterward. Certainly I accept any skepticism at my use of that word, as it ascribes a human emotion to a lowly beast. But she did walk around sheepishly for a little while after the incident.
**sigh** I sure miss that goofy girl.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
A Northern Boy's Tales of the Deep South, part 1
Guardian Angel
In a recent post at No Accent Yet, Tiff shared the hilarious tale of her “harrowing” experience with a spider in her car. Unlike Tiff, I’m generally okay with spiders; I just don’t want them crawling on me…or worse.
Tiff’s tale brought up a memory for me of something involving a spider that occurred when I was living in deep southwest Georgia, and then, as a consequence, other memories of funny stuff flooded in. And so, I am inspired to share them here. But not all at once.
As far as I can recall, and as far as I am aware, I have never been in a real life-and-death situation. Okay, well, maybe once. Sure, some may say that, since I often fly commercially, I am putting my life in someone else’s hands… How does that joke go? “When I die, I want to go quietly in my sleep, just like Grampa did; not screaming and crying like his passengers on his bus.”
No. Never really life-and-death. But at least I know that, during her lifetime, Angel, my Dalmatian, was ready to defend me to the best of her abilities.
I had lived in Bumph Huck, Georgia, for just over a year and a half, paying rent beyond what I could afford simply because it was the only place I found that would take a large dog. When I started looking for another place, a co-worker of mine named Bob, a very timid, cowardly man (I am not exaggerating) approached me and said that there was a piece of property owned by his family, which they had rented out in the past. It wasn’t the prettiest structure, but it was on a nice piece of property out in the woods next to a creek. I asked him how much rent he would be asking.
He lowered his head and stammered, “Well, we’ve asked as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.”
My knees nearly buckled as, surely, I was dreaming! “A HUNDRED FIFTY?!”
This was 1996.
Bob cowered a little. “We could ask for less…it’s okay.”
“LESS?” I couldn’t help but shout. “I’ll take it for one-fifty!”
“But you haven’t even seen the place!”
“Bob, right now I’d be glad to live in a cardboard box for one-fifty a month!”
The place was exactly as he had described. Tucked away in the woods behind a pecan orchard, it was a slightly glorified hunter's shack, built of cinder-blocks, and perched atop a sloping bank, with a large, picture-window view to a wide creek below. There was a massive concrete deck wrapped around two sides of it, and the rectangular building was covered with a heavy-beam, lodge-type roof. With the exception of the drab, unpainted cinder-blocks, the house and land were actually quite beautiful!
On Labor Day weekend, with the help of a friend and a co-worker, I moved in. As all moving days are, it had been a long day. Before I could even begin to unpack, the sun sank below the horizon, so I made sure I took care of the important tasks first – I set up my TV and reclining chair in the far corner, opposite the entry door and the kitchen. There was a fireplace on the end where I had set my chair, but Bob had apologetically forbade me using it because the chimney was cracked (the whole house was on a 40-year slide down the hill, so there were fundamental cracks in the concrete). On either side of the fireplace were built-in firewood bins with hinged wooden covers, great for setting things on, like asses and glasses.
The very next day I set to unpacking and setting things out. In the afternoon I took a break to make myself a sandwich and to lunch in my recliner in front of the TV. Angel, the poor soul I had already moved three times before she was three years old, was homesick for the last place, and was constantly expectant that we were going “home” every time I stood up, and would bolt for the car. As I sat and ate, she stood about four feet in front of me and stared at me. When I finished eating and set the plate on the table beside me, she stood and stared at me.
And then I stared at her. All I saw in her eyes was expectation. And then her eyes shifted from mine to the area just to my right.
And she growled.
Angel was a gentle soul; unless we were playing tug with one of her toys, I never heard her growl a serious growl…well, at least until we moved in with the future Mrs. Farrago and her dogs, but that’s another story.
It started very quietly, but it grew louder as her gaze intensified. For a brief moment I thought she was growling at me, since I’d heard it said that you should never stare into a dog’s eyes, which I had been doing. But then I realized she was definitely looking at something to my right and… b e h i n d m e . . .
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Angel was serious. I turned my head slowly, absolutely clueless as to what she could possibly be looking at. My eyes scanned the wall until they came to rest on something in the corner which hadn't been there before, on top of the wooden bin lid...about three feet away from me. A snake.
S N A K E ! !
The human body is capable of things we can’t possibly envision ourselves doing. How do I know this? I was seated in a soft, comfy reclining chair. I was reclined in this reclining chair. I had leaned forward and my torso was twisted to look at something behind me. The next thing I knew, I was standing behind Angel. I’m certain I flew there. When the quivering full-body shudder stopped I screamed “HOLY SHIT!” …and commenced another quivering full-body shudder.
While I raced frantically around my humble abode to find something with which to kill the snake, Angel stood calmly, quietly, protectively, and watched the snake. I found a baseball bat. I ran to the corner and then I realized that striking at the snake would mean getting to within 34 inches of a LIVE SNAKE! What kind of snake is it? I DON’T KNOW! Is it poisonous? I DON’T KNOW! If I missed it with the bat (I know my own record in baseball all too well!) could it – would it strike at me?
The bat wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t really want to kill the snake anyway, I just didn’t want it to kill me! I ran around for a while more and then I grabbed a can of Raid insect repellent. I didn’t suspect I could kill the snake with Raid, but I could make it really uncomfortable. I sprayed the snake, which then made a mad dash from whence it came, into a separation between the wall of the woodbin and the wall of the house. I sprayed that crack and all of the interior of that woodbin until the can was nearly empty!
After the holiday, when I went back to work, I told my frightening story to some of my co-workers, a few of whom had spent their entire lives in Bumph Huck, Georgia. And, as one might expect, they just laughed at me.
“It was a rat snake,” one giggled at me.
“It was a king snake,” chortled another.
Even if it had actually been a rattlesnake, I think the locals would have laughed at me just the same, just because I had the double-whammy affliction of being a city-boy northerner. And then, privately, they would have experienced their own quivering full-body shudders!
The snake never came back.
In a recent post at No Accent Yet, Tiff shared the hilarious tale of her “harrowing” experience with a spider in her car. Unlike Tiff, I’m generally okay with spiders; I just don’t want them crawling on me…or worse.
Tiff’s tale brought up a memory for me of something involving a spider that occurred when I was living in deep southwest Georgia, and then, as a consequence, other memories of funny stuff flooded in. And so, I am inspired to share them here. But not all at once.
As far as I can recall, and as far as I am aware, I have never been in a real life-and-death situation. Okay, well, maybe once. Sure, some may say that, since I often fly commercially, I am putting my life in someone else’s hands… How does that joke go? “When I die, I want to go quietly in my sleep, just like Grampa did; not screaming and crying like his passengers on his bus.”
No. Never really life-and-death. But at least I know that, during her lifetime, Angel, my Dalmatian, was ready to defend me to the best of her abilities.
I had lived in Bumph Huck, Georgia, for just over a year and a half, paying rent beyond what I could afford simply because it was the only place I found that would take a large dog. When I started looking for another place, a co-worker of mine named Bob, a very timid, cowardly man (I am not exaggerating) approached me and said that there was a piece of property owned by his family, which they had rented out in the past. It wasn’t the prettiest structure, but it was on a nice piece of property out in the woods next to a creek. I asked him how much rent he would be asking.
He lowered his head and stammered, “Well, we’ve asked as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.”
My knees nearly buckled as, surely, I was dreaming! “A HUNDRED FIFTY?!”
This was 1996.
Bob cowered a little. “We could ask for less…it’s okay.”
“LESS?” I couldn’t help but shout. “I’ll take it for one-fifty!”
“But you haven’t even seen the place!”
“Bob, right now I’d be glad to live in a cardboard box for one-fifty a month!”
The place was exactly as he had described. Tucked away in the woods behind a pecan orchard, it was a slightly glorified hunter's shack, built of cinder-blocks, and perched atop a sloping bank, with a large, picture-window view to a wide creek below. There was a massive concrete deck wrapped around two sides of it, and the rectangular building was covered with a heavy-beam, lodge-type roof. With the exception of the drab, unpainted cinder-blocks, the house and land were actually quite beautiful!
On Labor Day weekend, with the help of a friend and a co-worker, I moved in. As all moving days are, it had been a long day. Before I could even begin to unpack, the sun sank below the horizon, so I made sure I took care of the important tasks first – I set up my TV and reclining chair in the far corner, opposite the entry door and the kitchen. There was a fireplace on the end where I had set my chair, but Bob had apologetically forbade me using it because the chimney was cracked (the whole house was on a 40-year slide down the hill, so there were fundamental cracks in the concrete). On either side of the fireplace were built-in firewood bins with hinged wooden covers, great for setting things on, like asses and glasses.
The very next day I set to unpacking and setting things out. In the afternoon I took a break to make myself a sandwich and to lunch in my recliner in front of the TV. Angel, the poor soul I had already moved three times before she was three years old, was homesick for the last place, and was constantly expectant that we were going “home” every time I stood up, and would bolt for the car. As I sat and ate, she stood about four feet in front of me and stared at me. When I finished eating and set the plate on the table beside me, she stood and stared at me.
And then I stared at her. All I saw in her eyes was expectation. And then her eyes shifted from mine to the area just to my right.
And she growled.
Angel was a gentle soul; unless we were playing tug with one of her toys, I never heard her growl a serious growl…well, at least until we moved in with the future Mrs. Farrago and her dogs, but that’s another story.
It started very quietly, but it grew louder as her gaze intensified. For a brief moment I thought she was growling at me, since I’d heard it said that you should never stare into a dog’s eyes, which I had been doing. But then I realized she was definitely looking at something to my right and… b e h i n d m e . . .
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Angel was serious. I turned my head slowly, absolutely clueless as to what she could possibly be looking at. My eyes scanned the wall until they came to rest on something in the corner which hadn't been there before, on top of the wooden bin lid...about three feet away from me. A snake.
S N A K E ! !
The human body is capable of things we can’t possibly envision ourselves doing. How do I know this? I was seated in a soft, comfy reclining chair. I was reclined in this reclining chair. I had leaned forward and my torso was twisted to look at something behind me. The next thing I knew, I was standing behind Angel. I’m certain I flew there. When the quivering full-body shudder stopped I screamed “HOLY SHIT!” …and commenced another quivering full-body shudder.
While I raced frantically around my humble abode to find something with which to kill the snake, Angel stood calmly, quietly, protectively, and watched the snake. I found a baseball bat. I ran to the corner and then I realized that striking at the snake would mean getting to within 34 inches of a LIVE SNAKE! What kind of snake is it? I DON’T KNOW! Is it poisonous? I DON’T KNOW! If I missed it with the bat (I know my own record in baseball all too well!) could it – would it strike at me?
The bat wasn’t a good idea. I didn’t really want to kill the snake anyway, I just didn’t want it to kill me! I ran around for a while more and then I grabbed a can of Raid insect repellent. I didn’t suspect I could kill the snake with Raid, but I could make it really uncomfortable. I sprayed the snake, which then made a mad dash from whence it came, into a separation between the wall of the woodbin and the wall of the house. I sprayed that crack and all of the interior of that woodbin until the can was nearly empty!
After the holiday, when I went back to work, I told my frightening story to some of my co-workers, a few of whom had spent their entire lives in Bumph Huck, Georgia. And, as one might expect, they just laughed at me.
“It was a rat snake,” one giggled at me.
“It was a king snake,” chortled another.
Even if it had actually been a rattlesnake, I think the locals would have laughed at me just the same, just because I had the double-whammy affliction of being a city-boy northerner. And then, privately, they would have experienced their own quivering full-body shudders!
The snake never came back.
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