So we had a bit of an adventure/crisis the other morning, which it might entertain some of you to share here. The discovery has been made, in our household, that there exist in Fiji large spiders, the size of which certain members of our family are not accustomed to, having lived their entire lives in a land of only-mildly-perturbing-no-bigger-than-a-daddy-long-legs-sized spiders. These ones are like the size of a person’s outstretched hand. (OK, maybe a person with slightly smaller hands than mine. But definitely bigger than Lucy’s.) Brent agrees they’re about fifteen centimetres in diameter.
Anyway, that discovery in itself was not the adventure of which I speak. That begins thus: I’d just put Lucy in the highchair and started throwing things in the food processor to make a smoothie for breakfast, when Reggie appeared, completely devoid of even a scrap of clothing, requiring my immediate assistance to rectify that situation. (You know three-year olds; when they need you, they need you now.) So I helped him complete his ablutions and get some clothes on, while Brent made his lunch and dashed out the door to class, and Lucy sat patiently waiting for food.
I figured since I was already in the bedroom getting Reggie dressed, I’d take two seconds to make the bed and open the curtain. So having tucked in the bedclothes, I reached up to tug back the curtain, and only moved it twenty centimetres before I saw It, and dropped the fabric in a hurry. The Leg. All I could see of it through the curtain’s giant eyelet, that leg was sufficient to convince me that I did not wish to meet the arachnid to which it belonged. I promptly christened it Shelob, such was the terror it inspired. And, having no vial of spider-repelling Galadriel-light to raise aloft, I instead raised my phone to my ear and dialled my husband. He answered on the second ring. Of the third call. And hearing the non-composure in my voice, he said ‘I’m coming’ and hung up. I guess, to run. While I waited for him to burst through the door, I gingerly dragged the bed away from the window and assembled my line-up of two cans of bug spray and a roll of paper towel. Reggie and Lucy just stared at me.
Brent arrived moments later, saw my line-up, and requested a jandal. He shook the curtain and Shelob made a quick circle of the wall before realising it was safer behind the curtain, and there she remained no matter how much Brent shook. Not wishing to squish her guts onto the curtain, we had to figure out how to get her to move and eventually I worked up the courage to climb onto the bed and tip the curtain off its rod. That did it, and Shelob hurtled down the wall, across the floor and under the cot. Brent descended, jandal in hand, while I lifted the cot, and she was… gone.
Seeing a giant spider is nothing to the discomfiture of not seeing that giant spider when you know its there. We cautiously pulled the cot apart, to no avail. Finally, Brent suggested she must have disappeared down the side of the freestanding wardrobe, so he gave a spray of insect killer down there just in case, and Shelob ran out! Another spray, a smack, and she was defeated. Brent gathered the remains in a paper towel and hightailed it to class, where he didn’t even get to explain the reason for his tardiness. I really hope these are the kind of antisocial spiders who refuse to live within about a ten kilometre radius of each other.
In other news, sugar cane harvesting is in full swing and every time we go to Lautoka for groceries we pass the mill where dozens and dozens of overloaded trucks queue to offload their cargo. It’s hard to get a sense of the scale from this picture because you can’t see the building properly, but the line of trucks would be a couple of hundred metres long. There is also a very narrow gauge railway that seems to exist exclusively for transporting car after car of sugarcane behind what looks like an ancient steam engine. Reggie thinks it’s marvellous.
PS. For those of you concerned about Lucy, she did eventually get her smoothie, even if it was three-quarters of an hour after she sat down and ordered it. I am, however, confident she did not suffer any lasting psychological damage as a result, although she did neglect to tip her waitress.
Reasons I Choose To Look Up 