The Spider in the Bathtub

I woke up yesterday morning to two circumstances I had not anticipated and would not have wanted to deal with even had I anticipated them.

The first was a migraine that had blossomed overnight. If you've never had one, consider yourself fortunate--the phrases "blinding headache" and "ringing headache" don't quite do the migraine justice. The best you can do it pop some pain meds (Extra-Strength Tylenol PM is my flavor of choice), put on a sleep mask, lay back down and wait it out.

I sent an e-mail to my supervisor and co-workers to let them know that I wouldn't be in, but not until after I'd dealt with the second unforeseen circumstance: The spider in the bathtub.

It was a large black spider, or so it seemed through the haze of pain in the dim morning light against the semi-white porcelain of the bathtub. I've seen larger spiders--I once saw a banana spider in my grandmother's backyard, though most people either think my memory has exaggerated the size since my childhood or that I'm just making it up. (It hasn't and I'm not.) This spider in my bathtub was nowhere near that size--a bit bigger than my thumbnail, maybe--but big enough to to merit a "Jesus Christ!" from my lips when my eyes spotted it trying and failing to scamper up the slick, curved surface.

I felt bad for the spider. No, seriously. It wasn't the spider's fault that it had fallen into the tub and couldn't climb out. Who among us hasn't been in a situation we'd fallen into and couldn't crawl out of, no matter how hard we tried? I was not about to pick up the spider--that altruistic I'm not--but through the pounding of pain in my brain, I came up with what seemed to be a reasonable compromise: I grabbed a potholder from the kitchen and propped it against the shower curtain, hoping that the spider would see this, climb up and get to wherever it had been going in the first place.

Satisfied that I'd at least tried to do a good deed, I stumbled back to bed for the better part of what turned out to be a gloomy, rainy day. When I got up later to use the bathroom, I looked in the tub and found it empty. I stayed up long enough to enjoy the line of thunderstorms that moved through in the evening, lighing up the sky with loud electricity, and grabbed a bite to eat now that my stomach had settled down. I went back to bed and dreamed strange dreams.

This morning, I still had a headache, but it was no longer blinding--merely a dull, intermittent throb behind the eyes. That, I could deal with.

What I couldn't deal with, however, was what I found in the bathtub. It was the same large black spider in almost exactly the same spot as I'd seen it the morning before.

"oh, for fuck's sake," I muttered as I went through as much of my morning routine as I could--shaving, brushing teeth, taking a multivitamin and feeding the Girlish Girls--before I'd have to deal with the invading arachnid once and for all.

First, I tried the same trick I'd used the morning before: I propped the potholder against the shower curtain, hoping the spider would take the hint. It didn't, standing absolutely still. Next, I tried scooting it toward the spot where the potholder stood. No good; it scampered away, but not where I wanted it to scamper. Finally, I laid the potholder in front of the spider. It seemed to understand this gesture and crawled onto the middle of the red-checkered pattern.

Seemed. It paused in the middle for a moment, leaving open the possibility of me scooping up the potholder and dashing to the back door to let the spider out (wouldn't be the first time I'd performed such a "rescue," though on those occasions it was an ant or a beetle or some less fearsome thing), but then it ran with surprising speed across the tub to the lip of the drain--then down it.

That move pretty much decided things for me. I wasn't about to stick a finger down the drain to try and fish the spider out. For all I knew, that was where it had come from in the first place. So I stepped into the tub, turned on the shower and didn't even glance at the drain. The spider wasn't seen again.

Will it be back tomorrow morning? Doubtful. Stranger things have happened, though. And there are stranger things to come, no doubt.