Spider Under My Mosquito Net

I'm pretty sure everyone that knows me at all knows that I'm not a big fan of spiders. I didn't like them back in the states, and here they are larger and even more scary, therefore increasing my not liking them. The only good thing about them is that they eat mosquitoes and other little pest bugs. Depending on my mood, I will often just let them live in my room undisturbed as they pretty much know their territory and will keep away from me. My leaving them be also has to do with the fact that I hate squashing them, because the ones here are all juicy and big, and I'd almost rather live with the fear of them being in my room, rather than the nasty sound and crunch upon impact of a shoe or whatever the weapon may be.

Ok, now to the story at hand. I was laying there, relaxing under my mosquito net in my bed watching the academy award winning film, No Country for Old Men, when I get a phone call from my family. They called me to tell me that our trip to Punta Cana is pretty much booked, they just have to get a final count and give credit card information and stuff. Well as usual when my family calls, the phone gets passed around to everyone and I talk to everyone for a little bit. I believe I was on the phone with Julie when I suddenly see a large black mass out of the corner of my eye, and at first I couldn't tell whether it was on the inside or the outside of my net. Still talking to Julie, I sat up to took a closer look, and sure enough, the spider was right there, chilling underneath my mosquito net, trespassing in what he knows to be my territory. At this point I just about crapped my pants and got out of my bed faster than I have ever moved in my life. I talked to Julie and my dad for a couple more minutes, but then I had to cut the conversation a little short so that I could deal with this thing.

I ended up shaking the net a little from the outside so that it would crawl to a more convenient spot for me to deal with him. That did the trick, and he crawled right to the most accessible corner of my net. At this point I had one of two options: kill him right then and there or humanely catch him somehow and bring him outside for him to just come back in the next night. Well, I decided on option two and let me tell you why. Had I killed him right there in the corner of my net, his guts would have been splattered right there in my net, forever engraving the memory of this incident in my mind. Option two also had other risky side effects, including possible not capturing him and him accidentally crawling onto my arm or something. So I went and got a plastic cup in order to cover him and then something that I would be able to slip under the cup, effectively trapping him. It all happened without a hitch, and I opened up my door, knocked the cup over, and off he sauntered away, not scurrying like I had expected. After that, I went back to watching the movie (overall I think the movie was pretty good, not sure if it was worthy of the Academy Award since I hadn't seen all the other nominees, but I still haven't made my mind up on whether I liked the ending or not...I think it warrants another viewing), making sure that there were no spots in my mosquito net where any creepy crawly could invade. This also induced spider related dreams. They were a lot bigger and more threatening, but for some reason we laughed at them in the dream rather than being frightened by them.

Let me tell you that this is not the first time time that something has been under my net. Often there are little flies or other little harmless creatures (well the spiders are harmless as well, just scarier). The second worst thing was a little flying cockroach the other week, but it wasn't as eventful as this spider.

Below are some pictures of the spider. There is nothing in the picture to give you a reference to its size, so it will probably either look really small or really big to you all. You be the judge...only I know for real.