8-Legged Surprise

(warning, don't read this blog if you have a vivid imagination and/or fear of crawling critters)

I've heard that it's a good idea for couples to go to bed at the same time, for the health of the relationship. So although DF gets up a lot earlier than I do, I usually turn in when he does. My normal routine is to wait for him to fall asleep, then pull out my phone and hide under my pillow to block the screen while I read blogs or play games until I'm sleepy. To fully paint the picture: I'm laying on my stomach, with the pillow propped up on my head, turned at a slight angle to block the light from my phone screen, which I'm holding at about bed-level.

A couple weeks ago, an ant crawled across my phone screen during one of these late-night reading sessions. I squished it. Sidebar: squished ant smells weird. That was kind of gross, but since it was just a little ant, it was no big deal.

Last night, though, was a different story.

It was about 11:30pm. I was scrolling through the latest stories in Feedly, relaxing, letting my brain wind down from a busy day. Then I noticed some movement out of the corner of my left eye, the eye closest to the pillow. In a split second I realized this object was crawling and it had a lot of legs. SPIDER! CRAWLING UP THE UNDERSIDE OF MY PILLOW RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD! PANIC!!

I recoiled and the pillow fell on the bed. In the dark, with DF asleep, I didn't know what to do next because I could no longer ascertain the whereabouts of my little nighttime visitor. I grabbed my glasses off the nightstand and hopped out of bed. Remembering we have a flashlight out in the dining room, I scurried out to retrieve it, bumping into walls and furniture as quietly as possible in the dark. With flashlight in hand, I grabbed a handful of Kleenex out of the bathroom, my self-defense weapon of choice against bugs.

Returning to the bedroom, I tried to focus the flashlight just on my side of the bed. This commotion elicited a "hhnghhh?" from DF. "Sorry!" I said. "There was a spider!" He did not leap out of bed in fear. I guess he doesn't mind sharing his sleeping quarters with creepy crawly critters. Or he was still asleep...

By this point a good 3 minutes had passed since the last spider sighting, and I mentally prepared myself that the arachnid may have managed to escape my pillow trap. I had to check, though. So I counted to 3 and flipped the pillow onto the floor. A spider carcass dropped onto the carpet. Apparently when I had yanked my head out from under the pillow earlier, the force of the falling object was too much for the little guy to withstand. Bwah hah hah, that was my plan, exactly!

I checked to make sure it really was the same spider, then squished it for good measure. It was a decent-sized critter. Probably a 1/2 inch body, sort of yellowish-brown, with long brown legs. I think. It was still pretty dark and I was a bit amped up on adrenaline.

After disposing of the remains, I crawled back into bed, but not before carefully inspecting the area to make sure no other spider friends were coming to check on their fallen comrade. I told myself that it was just a random one-time occurrence and there's no reason to think my bed in normally overrun by spiders each night. Somehow I managed to get to sleep...eventually.