Arizona has its share of creepy crawlies, but for the most part they are pretty harmless. Take, for example, the little dark gray bugs that like to live in the dirt between the edge of the porch and the grass. Mom called them potato bugs, but I've also heard them called rolly pollys and other cute names. They are little, hard shelled bugs that crawl slowly across the palm of your hand until you poke them with your finger. Then they roll into tight little balls. Linda, my little sister, used to love to play with them, but that may not be much of an endorsement since she also liked to take kitchen spoons out into the yard and eat dirt. Mind you, mom put a stop to that when she found out what Linda was doing, but I think it may have helped Linda develop an affinity to all creatures who live in the magical world of dirt and grass.
She also loved to play with daddy long legs, those delightful little spiders with long, spindly legs sticking out from little brown, egg shaped bodies. Linda loved to let them crawl over her hands, she said they tickled. Phillip, my younger brother who is just a year older than Linda, liked to pull their legs off. I think he liked hearing us scream more than anything. Personally, I could put up with daddy long legs, (until they crawled across my face in the middle of the night when we were sleeping up at the cabin, that was going a little too far,) and potato bugs, but I really did not like black widows.
Not that I ever saw them. Black widow spiders don't like people, or bright lights, or open spaces, or anyplace where they are going to be seen. They do like dark, hidden spots behind piles of wood, potted plants with lots of greenery hanging all the way to the floor, and boots.
When I was six dad built us a new house out east of town. (It was so far east that Grandma Johnson cried and worried we would never get in to see her. Funny how times change and that house is now in the middle of Mesa.) Anyway, one night as dad was working late, trying to finish the house so we could move in, he rested his arm on the windowsill of the master bedroom, then saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He jerked his arm out of the window and found a black widow spider sitting right were his elbow had been a second before. Thank goodness it didn't bite.
Dad told us about his narrow escape, and scared the daylights out of me. If there were black widows living in our new house I wasn't sure I wanted to join them. Mom and dad assured me they were only there because we were not living there yet, and they would leave as soon as people moved in, but I wasn't so sure.
Not long after we moved to our new house I had a horrible dream. I dreamt we were on a picnic out in the desert. There was a big tree with a cement picnic table under it. We were all there, playing and eating and having a great time, until suddenly a huge black widow spider came ambling up. (Mind you, when I say huge I really mean huge! I suppose this dream happened soon after I watched an episode of Gilligan's Island with big, people sized spiders, because my dream spider was at least 5 feet tall and just as wide. It was awful!) This particular spider had an ingenious way of poisoning it's victims. It carried a hose to spray us with! I was petrified! That horrible old spider chased us around and around the table, and I was sure it was going to catch Phillip, but thank goodness I finally woke up before it caught him. I shook and shook, lying in my bed, afraid to get up and run to mom in case there really was a spider waiting for me.
I don't remember too many nightmares, but that one has stayed with me for over 40 years. It was a good one. Since then I've personally run into a few black widows, but none carrying poison sprayers or five feet tall. Usually I've stepped on them, but once I found one on a block wall, crawling out from behind the intercom speaker at Duncan Donuts as I sat in my car waiting for my turn at the service window. I wasn't very nice to that black widow. I happened to have a can of mace in my purse, so I sprayed it. I guess mace works on spiders as well as bad guys, because that poor thing curled into a ball and dropped out of sight in half a second.
My big brother, Keith, is the only person I've ever known who was actually bit by a black widow. Not long after he started to drive dad asked Keith to drive our old pickup out to the property we owned east of town to check on the irrigation. Keith was barefoot, so he stepped into some old wading boots, jumped into the truck, and started to back out the driveway. Suddenly he felt a piercing pain in his right toe. He said it was like being struck with a bolt of electricity. He jerked the truck to a stop, threw it into park, jumped out and pulled his boot off. Dumping it upside down, he saw a black widow spider fall out. Like I said, they like to hide in cool, dark, safe places, like inside boots and shoes. Keith squashed it, then ran into the house. Mom and dad didn't know what to do, no one had ever been bit before, so they called the hospital. The doctor said Keith would be OK, but in a lot of pain for awhile. He was, his toe turned a nasty color and the skin sloughed off, but he didn't die, so I guess even black widow spiders are not as bad as I used to think they were.
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