Praise Jesus and the Killing Shoe

Late Sunday Night

We’re staying at a five star hotel in this Game Reserve. We have our own little bungalow, complete with “romantic” green mosquito netting. Sure, there’s a giant cricket in our bathroom, but hey, she’s a lady cricket, and it makes it a little less uncomfortable. Maybe not. In any case, after the magnificent game drive, we had dinner with our jeep mates and James. Lizzie was at the old folks end of the table, including a South African General, his wife, and a retired British Airforce Engineer, the father/uncle/partner of Veruca Salt, who was sitting on my side, and who now is our arch nemesis, as she will be with us on our next two drives. Also on my side was James at the head of the table, and to his right and left a Welsh couple. Wales! How cute is that? Ol’ Veruca Salt is a lovely young British lady, probably around our age, but she is “sweet on” James, who, admittedly, is adorable, and she showcases this crush by talking about ALL THE AMAZING PLACES SHE’S BEEN! OH MY GOD! I’VE BEEN TO AUSTRALIA! ISN’T THAT WACKY? THEY HAVE THE MOST POISONOUS SPIDERS AND SNAKES AND BLAH BLAH BLAH LOVE ME.” Anyway, compare this to James’ story about the ear-spider, which I will tell you now. Stop reading if you are squeamish (Lisa P), and pick up here ** I wish someone had given this option to me, because I’m never going to sleep again.

So the adorable James is training to be a ranger for Krueger National Park, which is the big one in South Africa. He was playing cricket with a couple of the other fellas he’s training with, and suddenly a spider bit him on the ear. (I couldn’t tell exactly what kind of spider it was. With his South African accent, it sounded like “sex spider”, and we know that can’t be right). Not only did the sex spider bite his ear, the jerk also laid eggs in it. Utterly Rude. So since he was in the bush, he didn’t have immediate access to medical attention, and using a mirror had to cut the spider eggs out of his own ear with a swiss army knife. SICK. There was also spontaneous pus ejection when another cricket ball hit him in the ear later on that day. James, you are looking less cute by the moment. He had some other pretty disgusting stories, which leads me to the following.

**We get back to our room, after hearing about the various biting ants, poisonous spiders and scorpions which live where we are going to sleep. Immediately I kill a big ant, and then spots THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SPIDER on Lizzie’s pillow. We panic for a minute, screaming like the sissies we are (note, James said about fifty times that Africa is not for sissies. Thanks. We’re sissies.) Obviously we’ll never sleep if the spider lives, so we try to kill it, and it zips under Lizzie’s sheets. GREAT! We throw back the sheets ala Maria Von Trap in the Sound of Music, but the damn thing scuttles out of view. Finally, I spot it on the side of the bed, and hit it with the complementary bible four or five times, which stuns it, and Lizzie finishes the job.

Praise Jesus.

So it turns out the mosquito netting isn’t just for ambiance. We killed three more ginormous spiders with my shoe, which we hereby dub “the killing shoe”. I’m sure we’ll sleep just fine tonight. Yes. Just fine…