The One That Got Away (Not For Arachnophobes)

Image by Cayusa via Flickr

 

The scene: I was living in South Africa; visiting a friend; our husbands were working; neither of us had children then, but Julie did have a little dog called Pepi. 

Julie and I had eaten some of her scrummy food; had a good natter; drunk a little wine.  We sat together on her couch, watching a bit of tv.  The whole night, Pepi had been sniffing and scratching under and around the couch.

I went to the loo.  When I came back, Julie had moved the couch to see what Pepi was after – she said.  I saw the massive joke spider on the floor and laughed.  Pepi was sniffing at it. 

Julie: Why are you laughing?

Me: That’s a rubbish trick spider.

Julie: It’s real!

Me (laughing): Yeah, right.

Julie: It’s real; I swear. 

And to prove it, she took a telephone directory and threw it at the ‘spider’.  The book landed on the floor next to it and the ‘whump!’ of air made it fly up and land again, like a hairy frog.  It was obviously plastic.  Laughing really hard at Julie’s feeble attempt to scare me, I walked up to the spider and leaned down to pick it up, and that’s when it ran straight at me.

Julie screamed; I screamed; Pepi screamed; and all three of us jumped up onto the chairs, fidgeting and yelling like two women and a dog terrified of the biggest spider we’d ever seen.

Fortunately for us it was a Red Roman and they like to follow shadows, so it ran under the bottom of the front door and into the night.  We stayed on those couches for an hour; just to be sure.  Can you blame us?  Though they’re not poisonous, they eat mice.  We were skinny girls back then; you can’t be too careful.

Blog Posts I Have Loved

I saw this on Musing‘s blog and had to share it with you:

I meant to post it days ago but I forgot.

As I have lifted one item from another blog, I might as well compound my crime by sharing this, which had me laughing out loud, and not just in a polite lol way.  It’s too good a story not to share.

Vivinfrance wrote an interesting piece about haggis; this was one of the comments, from The Poet’s Quill.

I’ve never been anywhere where haggis was served. I would love to try it. I’ve had both fried rattlesnake and alligator, of course they are cold-blooded critters, but they were good. We had a difficult time getting a recipe for rattlesnake, but I’ll never forget the recipe we got from a friend’s mother. She was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. My friend said that she would have a recipe if anyone would. This is how she thought they should be prepared.

Cut off the head and discard, the thing still can bite even if it appears dead.
Skin it.
Remove all the intestines.
Cut it into three-inch lengths.
Take the three-inch pieces and flush them down the toilet.