EEEEEEK!

I was just now sitting here typing up meeting minutes and noticed a small, peculiar looking spider slowly walking across the top edge of my keyboard. I don’t know what kind it is, other than it has sort of a tiny, striped, football-shaped (and by that I mean an oblate spheroid-variety football) abdomen and it looked like it was holding two long legs out in front of itself.

It got about to the F8 key and I figured I would thump it off into the floor beyond the desk. I eased my thumb and middle finger down there…just…like…aaaand…AAAAAAH! AAAAAH! *&%@#$&*^^&$&^!!!! ITJUMPEDONMYFINGER!!!!!!! I very nearly screamed like a little girl and fell off my tuffet, but realizing my reputation, I screamed like some large moron and flicked it off somewhere.

Where?!?

Oh crapohcrapohcrap!

I probably flung it into my hair or down my shirt collar or in my ear or down my shoe and it’ll crawl out and bite me and kill me and I’ll be stuck here at my desk until someone notices that I’m moving less than normal and… Oh, there it is. Climbing across one of the kids’ picture frame on my desk. Then it disappears again. At least it’s not on me. I don’t think. Then it shows up on the cork board wall beside my desk. A coworker just came in and I showed him and told him it jumped on me. He was suitably impressed, and then I got a piece of paper and squashed it. The spider, not Fred. Fred is too big to squash with paper, and he has never jumped on my finger.

Well, anyway, back to work.

UPDATE: Pelican Stater Janis Gore writes in marvelling at my lack of fortitude and general goobishness:

Subject: Eeeee?

Terry,

My gosh, hon. No wonder the Southerners lost the war.

Well, all I know is that The War would have been over in minutes had the Yankees unleashed spiders at First Manassas.

In this case, my high-pitched squeal of terror was not caused so much by the spider itself as it was the unexpected preemptive strike it launched on my "i-k-comma" typing finger. Just try typing anything witty and erudite without "i" or "k" or the lovely ","! I had very good reason to be all skeert.
posted by Terry at 2:13:00 PM