Today I was driving my daughter home from school and she was telling me that they were talking about spiders at school. She reminded me of an incident we had with a spider years ago at our house in the country:

We were sitting on the front porch of our house. We had a few people over visiting. Plus there was my daughter who was about 5 years old at the time, my sister, and myself. So we're just hanging out, talking, maybe having a couple of beers and it was late in the afternoon.

Suddenly Toot said, "Mommy look at that big spider!"

I looked and sure enough, it was a huge spider. Probably the biggest one I had ever seen in person outside of a zoo enclosure. Everyone kind of froze and stared at the spider sitting there on the porch.

Someone said, "I think that is one of those wolf spiders." This spider was amazing and scary looking. It was one of those fearsome things that you can't stop staring at but know you should get a shovel or something and take it out swiftly.

And then suddenly we didn't see the spider anymore. It apparently moved at the speed of light because one moment it was there and then the next moment it wasn't.

Of course, all hell broke loose with people running and screaming and slapping at themselves to make sure the spider wasn't on them. I grabbed Toot and we ran down the sidewalk and I sat her down some distance from the house to carefully check her over, making sure the spider wasn't on her.

Finally a couple of us ventured back up onto the front porch to look around for the spider. I believe someone actually grabbed a garden rake or something to kill it with. We didn't even want to open the front door because as fast as that thing moved, we didn't want to chance letting it into the house.

We never found that spider. Can you just imagine the horrible squishing noise it would have made if someone had flattened it with a garden implement?