One dark and foggy Saturday night my brother and I were watching one of my favorite shows, “Seinfeld.”  I was sitting in my recliner and my brother was relaxing on the couch next to the wall.  Little did we know that a monster was lurking in the darkness right above our heads’.  I was focused on this particular episode along with my brother because George (one of the characters) was about to do or say something funny. 

            Earlier that week I was frightened by a small, yet deadly monster in my bathroom in the downstairs portion of my house (near the area where me and my brother are watching TV).  It is one of the most vial and gruesome poisonous creatures who is so ruthless that it kills its male counterpart.  That is why it is called the black widow.  This spider is obviously black with long spindly legs that seem to be thicker than most other spiders.  It has a red hour glass on its back which distinguishes it from other, less ferocious spiders.  I was so frozen with fear that all I could do was call for my dad to kill the spider. These monsters seem to frequent my house on occasion and I have had a number of near misses where I was almost bitten.

            Anyway, my brother seemed to be glued to the TV because he had informed me on one occasion that George Kastanza off of Seinfeld was his idol.  All of a sudden, my brother noticed one of the most hideous and completely terrifying instances that I can recall.  It was a creature falling towards his left side near the wall.  He yelled to me “do you see that” and I glanced over in that direction.  To my amazement, it was a giant black widow spider riding its way down a single string of web on a sneak attack mission.  I could see its four inch fangs dripping with poison as it moved in for the kill.

            I was frozen in fear because I have arachnophobia.  I couldn’t do anything but stare at this spider as it trickled down.  My brother was able to break out of the trance that he was in and he ran to the garage to find the bug spray.  Before he left, he instructed me to watch the spider and not let it out of my sight.  That would be easy for me since that’s all that I could do.  I kept the spider in my sights as it tried to camouflage itself on the wall.  My brother ran in with bug spray (for wasps and ants, luckily the spider couldn’t read).  The spider was suddenly hit with a steady stream of poison and the beast began to wiggle and fight for life. 

            After a few more shots of poison, my brother scooped the spider up, squished it between his fingers and ate it.  Just kidding, he scooped it up onto one of those small garden shovels, brought it into the garage and stomped its guts out.  He commented that after being hit with that much bug spray, that spider must have been tough to still be fighting for life.  So, the legend of the black widow spider continues.   

            To this day, I still remind my brother of the spider that could have taken his life if it wasn’t for his keen senses.  We both laughed but somewhere inside we are both still scared to death of spiders.  In fact, my brother has trouble sleeping at my house because he is scared that another black widow spider might attack him in his sleep.  I’m concerned too, but I enjoy sleep too much to lose any over a deadly spider.