Tarantula!

“I think something bit me….” PP muses as she examines the small red bumps on her leg. Holding it up out of the hot tub, she glances over a DL.
“I woke up once and my eye was completely swollen shut. And then there were all of these layers of red scaling folds running down my cheek and……well, I was completely freaked out.”
“What was it?”
“A spider bite.”
“Really? A spider did all of that?”
DL nods, “It was awful.”

“Sounds super scary,” PP agrees. She can’t imagine. If she woke up with her face like that, she’d scream really loud.

That would help.

“You wanna go in Utopia,” DL heaves herself out of the hot tub, heads to the sauna.

“Hey, Sandy,” PP greets.
“Hello, Ladies.”
“DL was just telling me about a horrendous spider bite she got that…. Well, she can tell you.”
DL does. Sandy, of course, is all ears and questions. “Did they find out what kind of spider it was? You were asleep in bed when it happened? Why didn’t your cat catch it?”
“No, Yes, She was asleep, too.”
Sandy nods, “I had an ex-fiancé who got me a tarantula for a pet.”

“A tarantula!” PP exclaims, the image of her mother beating back one of the big black hairy monsters with a broom.
“Yup.”
“Why a tarantula?” PP asks.




Shaking her head, laughing, Sandy grins, “You see, there was this neighbor down the street who had the cutest rag doll Persian cat and they just ignored it like all get out and so every evening the cat would come to our door, knock knock, and we’d feed it and pet it, but then one day I realized that I was sniffling and my eyes were all red and watery. I was allergic to the cat.”

PP nods, wondering what the rag doll cat allergy had to do with tarantulas, but knew that patience was key here. If she just let Sandy talk, she’d get around to the arachnids.

“So my ex fiancé and his buddy,” she laughs. “Buddy....Cuz what do you call two forty something guys who go out and do such a thing as bring home a tarantula for a pet.”
“A pet tarantula?” PP asks, “Did you have.... what’s it called? A terrarium?”
“A terrarium? No,” she laughs again. “No, I told him to take the goddamn thing and put it back on Mt. Diablo where it belongs.”
“Did he?”
“Oh, yeah.”

“Is that where he got it in the first place?” PP asks, glancing over at DL who’s listening with rapt spider attention.
“No, he just found it in his back yard and caught it and presented it to me for my birthday.”
“Seems like a strange pet. I mean you can’t walk it or …..”
“Actually, you can. I don’t know about walking them, but they’re actually very sweet. Very good-natured.”

Again, PP conjures up the image of the big evil spider crawling menacingly out of the ‘forest’ in Hacienda Heights, her mother with the broom, ready to chase it or destroy it. At the time, it had been so scary, and of course, PP had been so relieved when her mom had done away with the savage monster.

But now a whole new world of good natured tarantulas was opened up to her.
Would the tarantulas of Hacienda Heights have made good pets?

PP shivers even in the heat of Utopia. Somehow she just can’t picture it. Having a tarantula for a pet. Way too big. Way too black. Way too scary.

No way.

And the same seemed to be true for Sandy, too, since she had her ex-fiancé get rid of her tarantula.

Surely DL’s spider bite hadn’t been a tarantula? She would’ve woken up if such a creature had been crawling under her sheets and….







EEEECCCCKKKK!!!!

PP glances around U. The two women are staring at her. Had she just shrieked for real?
“....and birds are better pets than people know. They’re actually quite possessive….” Sandy continues, DL nods, PP grins.

How’d they get from tarantulas to birds?

See, that’s what she gets for allowing her imagination to run away. She loses the thread of the story.

Though in this case, the loss of thread might be just what she needs for an apt conclusion.

After all, how did she get from showing her bites to DL to a story about Tarantulas?

She never knows. It just happens.