Gigantically Spiderific

Late last night, I was in my room, and heard excited shouts from downstairs. I went down to tell Middle Child not to wake up her sister, on pain of death, and found the Man and MC conspiratorially huddled by the counter, looking at something. It turned out to be this lady:

She is gigantically huge, and if you look closely, you will see that she is covered in babies. Giant spider babies. Now, I like babies as much as the next girl, but giant spider babies? Not so much.

MC and the Man were observing the spider from across the counter, discussing its size and general scariness. MC decided to take a picture with her phone, but wanted something for perspective, so I found a ruler, which she set next to the jar. Not quite the right impact for her, though, and she asked her stepdad to put his head near the jar, which he sort of did, reluctantly. I told him he should give the thumbs up, and he started to, but then decided that biting his fingernails in terror would be more apropos.

He told me that he'd been walking the dog when he saw this huge arachnid walking down the middle of the street. He was contemplating a closer look, when a car came around the corner, threatening to cut short her moonlit stroll in a pretty gruesome fashion, at which point my kindly husband stepped into the street and waved the car around the spider. He is an animal lover, that one. He ran inside to get a jar, and poked several large-ish holes in the lid before rushing back out to rescue her from the perils of highway travel.

I felt somewhat bad for Mrs. Giant Spider, because she was not happy about being in a jar. I wouldn't have been happy either, especially with all those babies to carry around! I asked the Man to take her outside, and perhaps leave her in the wooded area behind our house, but he was reluctant to do this. You see, he initially thought she was extremely hairy, and only discovered after he'd put her in the jar that the "hair" was actually baby spider legs, all over her back. Because he did not originally understand the situation, he'd poked the holes  rather too large, thinking that the spider he was confining was gigantic, and not teeny tiny, and that there was one spider, not one zillion spiders. Now, he explained, he was afraid to pick up the jar, lest one zillion baby spiders swarm out onto his arms.

This, I felt, was reasonable, but at the same time, not practical. I understood completely why he did not want a swarm of tiny giant spiders on his person, but I was not as clear as to why he felt it would be preferable to risk a swarm of tiny giant spiders in my kitchen. Needless to say, I was persuasive in my argument, and Mrs. Giant Spider and her brood now live in the wooded area of our neighborhood.

Where, MC pointed out, they can hang out and possibly eat Ron Weasley.

Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight giant spiders everywhere.Sweet dreams, neighbors!