creepy crawlers of kerala

i’m not an anti bug girl. not a girly-girl. not that girl that freaks out when a fly lands on her. in fact, i’m quite the opposite. i greatly welcome the majority of insects and small creatures in kerala. for example, i love all of the lizards and openly invite them into my home as long as they feed off of mosquitoes. but these stories crossed the line a bit. and by crossed i mean went so far over the line that the line was a just a dot.

small detail i left out of my Kovalam holiday recap. jessica and i stayed in a room together. we originally just got 2 rooms and were going to pile 3 people in a bed (don't judge, we are broke) but the hotel manager turned out to be really nice and gave us an extra room free of cost. now clearly we are staying at a hostel. not the nicest, but not terrible either. the rooms were small but nice. mosquito netting over the bed, clean cold shower. we spent the first day mostly out and about and when we came back we were beat. and and had a couple of kf's at dinner. so we showered and lounged around a bit before bed. jessica walks around to the other side of the bed and the next thing i hear is a gasp and multiple multiple swear words. her first comprehensible words were "there is a spider so big there that i question if i can even kill it." i peered around the bed and sure enough, there it was. i kid you not, the size of its body was the size of my fist. and it's legs doubled the size. that's a big freaking spider. now don't judge me, i'm normally the girl that handles all types of bugs and creatures (i was the go-to bug killer of 1371) but this was a little out of my league. i mean, i was thinking about hearing bones crush and getting sprayed with brain splatter...maybe even hear a spider scream escape from it on its way out. (or worse attempting to kill it, failing, pissing it off, and having it call off of its giant spider friends and attack me, wrap me up in a web and suck out all my insides). but again, there was no way we were just going to let this thing hang out in our room- inches away from our heads. where we were planning on sleeping. merely picking it up and moving it outside was out or the question, for the simple fact that we all secretly wondered if it was poisonous, because a bite from a spider that big would surely mean instant death. so- don't judge- we went and got the boy of the group. actually what i did was open his door, make a pitiful face, crawled into his bed and whimpered that there was a big spider and we needed help. embarrassing i know, but no one else wanted to kill it. not my finest moment. anyway, jeremy killed it and we often speak about the experience of the spider big enough to carry us away in our sleep. surely another spider that big did not exist in all of India, it had to be physically impossible.

wrong again turner. the other day after catching up on emails, i get up and take a trip to the squatty. a little more information than you might be interested in, but all part of the story, trust me. i lock myself into the tiny little stall (about 4ft by 4ft), get ready and squat down to do my business. and then i make eye contact. with at least 8 pairs of eyes. there is another one of those giant spiders directly in front of me, about a foot away from my face...and other special parts of my body. just hanging out, watching me. this spider seems even bigger than the other one in kovalam, but maybe this is just because it's so very very close to me. and there is the minor fact that i am completely ‘exposed’ if you will. not a place you ever, ever want to be in while interacting with a spider the size of a small cat. for a second i debated not moving and continuing with my original plan of using that stall. i halfway talked myself into it (i really had to pee) but than i had the image of the spider waiting to 'make his move' whilst i was unable to protect myself lest i soak myself. and of course, again, the parts of my body were exposed that i would want to protect the most. so i very slowly stood up, never taking my eyes off the spider and slowly opened the door and once safely out, made another embarrassing girlish scream and shutter. then, i picked another stall, better believe that i searched that stall quite well before exposing myself again.

ugh. welcome to india. never a dull moment...never a small spider.