In Our Expert Opinions

  

I wouldn't say that I am deathly afraid of spiders, small rodents or other creepy-crawlies.

It turns out I am delusional.

Our team of eight women had been in Guatemala for a few days already by the time last Wednesday rolled around.  We had spent Saturday and Sunday traveling, Monday was a prep day, Tuesday was spent in the school and then a remote village.  So by the time we hit Wednesday we thought we had been initiated into all that comes along with being in remote parts of foreign lands, mainly things like finding spiders in your shoes and killing enough no-see-ums (evil bugs) to last a lifetime.

It also turns out we were delusional.

We were wrapping things up for the night.  We had done our debriefing, had devotions and were heading back to our rooms.  You can see in the picture that the place we were staying was basically a thatched roof and all of the doors opened to the exterior.  (The bedrooms were all enclosed and had drop ceilings, so it's not like our rooms opened up straight into the thatched roof.)  I was the first to walk back down the exterior walkway, looking forward to crawling into bed and crashing for the night.  I got past the first door when I noticed a rather dark blotch on the side of the window frame.  The lights were dim so I wasn't entirely sure what I was looking at.

And then I got closer and realized I was looking at one hairy spider, seeming rather tarantula-like. I made an immediate u-turn and headed back to the group to warn them of our visitor.

The picture does not do it justice.  It was a baby tarantula
in our expert opinions.

So, of course, being women, we all gathered around, trying to get close but not too close.  I know, we do weird things.  We're terrified of the blasted thing but we still want to get close enough to get pictures.

And, of course, being women, we had to figure out how to kill the thing pronto.

And, of course, being women, we found the biggest can of bug spray we could find and unloaded about half of it on this spider.

He slowly slid his way down the wall and by the time he got to the floor, he was still going strong.  So we sprayed some more.  He kept inching along, fighting his way through the flood of bug spray.  We sprayed some more.  I didn't think this sucker was ever going to die.  And if he did, it would probably be our luck that he would come back from the dead.  

The black, round little blob is the dead spider.

Jill, being our resident bug zapper, whipped off her flip flop with the intent to just smash the thing and deliver the final blow.  And in my head I'm thinking, "Jill...I really don't think you want that thing all over the bottom of your shoe.  This is not some itty-bitty mosquito we are talking about crushing here."  Because there won't be just a little blood spatter by the time you get done killing this thing.  You'll need a stick to scrape this thing off.  So I told her to grab a rock.  

Which she did.  And then she dropped it on top of him.  Direct hit.  The rock proceeded to shatter all over the place, but thankfully when we removed a few chunks and unearthed the spider, he was curled up on his back, sufficiently dead. You lose.

But wait!  The story doesn't end there.

So we took a moment to regroup after our minor spider mishap.  We were all back standing up at the top of the stairs.  I decided I was going to brave another attempt to get back to my room and crawl into bed.  I was practically holding my breath, hoping nothing else would come out of the shadows.

I made it back to our door - and for whatever strange reason, I hesitated, just standing there before I opened it, staring at the door.  I then heard this slight rustling noise.  My immediate response was, "Dear Lord, please don't let anything come falling out of the rafters on top of me."

It didn't come out of the rafters but it sure came out of the shadows.  This rather smallish rat/extra extra large mouse came scrambling out of the shadows of my door frame.

I don't think I have ever screamed, jumped or scrambled so loud, so high or so fast in my life.

Which then precipitated a wave of correlating screams from the other seven women.  And I'm not even sure they knew what they were screaming about.  They just heard me screaming and saw me running.

At this point, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.  Cara was nearly beside herself in tears.  I think Karen was ready to pack her bags or at least sleep in a sealed container for the night.  And I'm honestly not sure how the rest of the women responded because I was too busy laughing hysterically out of nervous fear and adrenaline.

It's at this point that we see the lights from the mission house come on.  Out comes poor Karren, one of the Mission2Guatemala staff members, to check on us and make sure we were all still alive.  I'm sure with the amount of screaming we did, it was easy to think one of us had died or had at least been abducted.  We rehashed what happened and I think she was looking at us like we had lost our minds, especially when we showed her pictures of the spiders.  I swear it was bigger in real life than what the pictures indicate.  But being the polite, kind woman that she is, she humored us and checked our room for any creepy crawlies, four-legged creatures, or any other member of God's creation.

When I was telling the gathering of pastors' wives the next day about our little escapade, they, too, laughed and thought we were crazy and maybe slightly overreacting.  I liken it to the moment when a parent has a child who is overreacting and they want to pat the kid on the head and say in a slightly patronizing tone, "There, there.  It will all be okay."  I suppose if we had been in the South, they would have all just smiled sweetly at us and said, "Bless your little hearts."  

And since being home, I have killed two spiders.  They are no baby tarantulas, but at this point, I don't care.  They're dead.