Sunday morning, as is my habit, I made an inspection of our
main bathrooms on my way into church.
Sometimes. . . things . . . happen over the weekend that need to be
tended to before our Sunday morning crowds. Walking into the men’s room, I saw
a large, dead wolf spider lying in the middle of the floor, with its legs
folded under it. I grabbed a paper towel
to scoop it up and put it in the trash can. As soon I as touched it with the
paper towel, the spider sprang to life! (Who knew that spiders played possum?)
I shrieked, loudly, “It’s aliiiive!,” reminiscent of the doctor bringing
Frankenstein to life. And, of course, I ran.
That’s when the scary stuff started.
The wolf spider ran, too. DIRECTLY TOWARDS ME. Little Things
ought to skitter away from Things That Are Bigger Than They Are. Not this wolf
spider. It chased me halfway across the men’s room! It then stood its ground, glaring at me with
all zillion of its spidery eyes. I took
a step towards it. It didn’t budge but kept glaring.
We were at a standoff, my two eyes glaring back at his
zillion eyes.
My problem is that I actually like spiders, and wolf spiders
are some of my favorites. They eat the bad guy spiders, like black widows and
brown recluses. They can grow to almost tarantula-esque
proportions. If you get really lucky, you might find a female wolf spider with
all of her little baby wolf spiders riding on her abdomen, which is a really
cool sight to see. However, just because I like the species doesn’t mean that I
wanted an attack spider terrorizing the men’s room on a Sunday morning.
I went for reinforcements, grabbing the only other person in
the building at that hour, Eli the Amazing Sound Guy. As we walked to the men’s room, he muttered
something about “other duties as assigned,” but I’m sure he meant it in a
complimentary way. He offered to smush the spider, but I insisted on a
bloodless solution. With the help of a Styrofoam cup, we (okay, Eli) captured
him, and I liberated him into the John Wesley garden. He’ll have plenty of yummy things to attack
and munch as he lives out the rest of his happy spider life at the feet of John
Wesley’s statue.
We had a surprisingly good crowd for a holiday weekend, and I
hope the great worship services made the trip worthwhile for those who came. And you can rest assured that, while we
praised God inside of our building, our attack wolf spider was on guard
outside.
