Yeeeegad!

I got a little unexpected and unwanted gift today. I was in my parents' garage looking for empty boxes I could use to pack and ship Christmas gifts back to San Francisco. I found a stack of new cardboard boxes leaning against a work table, so I grabbed one and hauled it up to my bedroom. I taped up the bottom of the box, flipped it over, and holy mother of all that is scary, realized that a black widow spider was scuttling about 4 inches from my hand. Yeesh! And shudder!! I shrieked and jumped back most ungracefully, while hollering for my (younger) sister to come help. Apparently, the fear and panic were quite evident in my voice, because she came sprinting upstairs...and skidded to a halt when she saw the spider. I ran downstairs to get a shoe with which to kill the bugger (my excuse for hollering and not running downstairs immediately to get a shoe myself was that I was afraid if I took my eyes off the spider, it would run off and hide somewhere...good thinking, right? Right?!) and she smacked it, turned over the shoe, and verified that it was, indeed, a black widow. Eep! I had the heeby-jeebies for the next hour and kept imagining that I felt something crawling up my arm.

Eventually, though, I calmed down, but now I can't help but think that there must've been a gang of spiders hanging out together (a fly klatch, perhaps?) and that the rest of them are hiding in my bed, ready to avenge the death of their dear, deadly friend. Yipes.