So last night, we got in bed and were reading, trying to relax after our incident with smacking into a deer on the way home. While ironically reading about prepping for various disasters and emergency situations, I felt a little tickle near my ribs. My first thought was that it might be a member of the arachnid species, but my mind immediately soothed, It could just be a wayward hair, or a cat’s tail, or Noodle’s whiskers.

With impressive constraint, I pointed beside me. “Baby, is there something in the bed right here?”

Melissa looked down and simultaneously shot out of bed, while saying, “Oh shit!”

Well there was my answer right there. And the only thing to do was jet out of bed myself. We stared at the bed in horror. The spider had skittered away. At the foot of the bed on the floor, she spotted it. Casting her eyes about for some spider-worthy weapon. It turned out to be the copy of Clan of the Cave Bear she had in her hand–which, she insists, is the solution for all survival situations. She used the back of it to smack the little brown recluse that was likely part of a spider-cabal we have around here. Problem solved.

That one, anyway.

Now there were the nagging questions. Was that the original spider, or just one of his leggy friends? And since we’d seen three spiders in as many days, we wondered if perhaps there were several of them in the room with us.

Resolute, she headed back to bed, while I hovered in the doorway, chewing a nail.

So out came the peppermint spray, and she misted all around the bed while I considered the wisdom of taking a peppermint bath. If spiders were repelled by peppermint, I thought it might be a good idea to douse myself in the stuff.

I mused about moving to another house, but one never knows if there would be spiders everywhere else we went. It took quite a lot of cajoling to get me back in that bed. I even considered sleeping in the recliner. But she pointing out, there might be a spider there, too.

Her theory about recent spider-sightings was that she had sprayed peppermint all around recently, and they were all trying to

get away from it. Unfortunately, their escape led them right into our warm bed.

We shook out the sheets, and pillows, and I made sure to peek into the pillow cases, just in CASE.

I felt no further tickling, and as the fog rolled in outside the windows, I reassured myself that the trauma was short-lived and that one day, I would simply have to accept the fact that we would deal with various lifeforms that didn’t meet with our approval.