Morning Ritual Interrupted

We were sitting at the bottom of the bed drinking coffee and eating cereal singing along to uplifting morning songs and watching the news with subtitles - usual weekday morning routine.

Something crept over my skin and in a fit of alarm I jumped up and screamed (not a whimper, a full-body gut-wrenching scream) and flung what had crept over me away. The Panther stamped on it and we all calmed down. What was it? He wanted to know. A really big black spider walked on me I said not quite confident and hovering in the doorway. We sat back down and carried on.

Moments later the Panther leapt up vigorously brushing something off his head. Its on my head! Where is it? I scarpered to the doorway. We kept looking about, in vain.

Later in the bath I was overcome with laughter. Panther said he didn't know what had happened when I screamed so, and he decided to act out stamping on something just to get me to calm down enough to tell him what it was. I laughed more. I had been convinced he had killed it (there was a wet patch and everything - not that I'm approving of killing spiders you understand). I have no idea how it got from my hand to his head - I must have flung it there, but he claimed it was large, black with yellow bits on it and looked like a tarantula. I'm doubtful. I know Italy has tarantulas now that are smaller than those horrible hairy things in the zoo but even so. Where would it come from? I'm very wary of going in the bedroom now because in both our sudden movements of alarm we just managed to dislodge it and not to capture it and remove it to other environs.

We discussed how neither of us likes to handle spiders, while not normally afraid I can catch one in a glass and put it outside but not with my bare hands.

I remember when we were little staying in a cottage with the family there was a huge house spider in the room I was sharing with my sister, we called for our father while watching it from the safety of the bed, when he arrived and saw it he leapt up there with us and we had to be rescued by our mother who was adept at grabbing them in hand and flinging them out.