Spiderman in house

I have sometimes wondered where I got this affinity towards some weird creatures, even though I would probably never want to handle them. It seems it started many years back in Battiprolu in AP. When I was two years old a cobra was found in a cupboard very near to where I was sleeping, then there was the crab and three or four snakes in Berhampur. Even in Chennai where it is really hard to find any wildlife other than crows/cockroaches, a snake somehow managed to find my cycle’s front wheel a comfortable place to coil itself around and take rest. This was all when I was in school, and it didn’t really matter then, but an encounter with a 5 inch spider in your living room is a different thing. This is exactly what we had to deal one fine night a fortnight back. Vivek’s frantic call for back up at home didn’t raise any alarms, we (Venkat and I) were relaxed, it might have been some cockroach or a small harmless insect, but imagine our shock when we opened the front door and found ourselves face to face with a 5 inch huge spider.
All our lives we have always seen spiders as some harmless things hanging out near the ceiling with wiry legs. We just had to blow them away. But this one was humongous, the biggest we had seen outside the T.V. We were faced with a dilemma –to kill or not to kill, what if we tried to kill and it escaped and attacked us instead, regardless of whether it is poisonous or not its size was enough to seed fear into us, if we just shoo it away it might come back also. So we decide to kill the foe. But it wasn’t a simple matter either, the spider was near the ceiling, away from mine or venkat’s striking range with a broom. So we had to lure it to a lower height and then give the fatal blow. We decided to film our brave efforts; vivek took up the position of a cameraman. I tried to lure or rather irritate the spider into coming down, it was quick for its size, once or twice it attacked the broom, I was happy I was nowhere near its huge fangs. It kept running towards the tubelight – its safe haven. After nearly half and hour we got it in a safe height. I handed over the broom to Venkat to deliver the final blow. The attack came from the left, with a blinding speed Venkat leapt off the ground with arms raised as if ready for smash in badminton. It was over in a second. The spider which had taken refuge in our house had left this mortal world, it soul departed, only its body remained, after a final photo of the crime scene we hit the sack. We had conquered one of our worst fears. The spider was a visible threat which we could easily conquer, while there are other mysterious biting insects which have so far been invisible to our eyes but somehow have managed to wound us every night. The mysterious insect might have won the battle but the war will be ours, we will win over every foe that kochi throws up at us and live to tell the tale in this blog.
Our fight for independence continues.