NATURE VS NURTURE: PART DOS

Just 2 or 3 weeks ago I was in the kitchen where I work fixing a cup of coffee to take back to the office.  Carolee is the kitchen assistant and part-time chef.  This particular morning she rushed into the kitchen in an absolute frenzy.  She looked possessed.  

"I don't know how I'm ever going to get home," she muttered.  "Is it on me?  Do you see anything on me?"

"No, you look fine," I answered.

"No, I mean, do you see anything ON me?" she asked.  She was brushing her hands up and down her clothes and running them through her hair.

I checked her over.

"No, nothing," I reassured her.

"Good," Carolee said, but she wasn't convincing.  "That means he's still in the car.  How am I ever going to get home?"

Bit by bit her story emerged.

Carolee has to be at work at 7am when she is the kitchen assistant; that means leaving her home in Flagler Beach before 6:15.  This time of year it is still very dark at until almost 7:00.  That morning she got into her car and headed north on A1A to St. Augustine.  A1A runs along the ocean part of the way, then veers inland through the Hammock, a heavily wooded area, then runs back along the ocean. For most of the trip it is dark; there are few lights until you enter St. Augustine Beach.

Carolee was zipping along just minding her own business when she passed a an open and well-lit gas station.  Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something on her rear view mirror.  A second horrified look confirmed that it was a ... banana spider!  
 

At nearly the same instant that she identified the THING on her rear view mirror she passed into the darkness of the Hammock. She careened along A1A terrified that monster was going to jump on her.  She couldn't stop.  What was she going to do?  It was pitch black on the two-lane road; she'd get run over!  (Besides, if she stopped in the woods in the dark and got out of the car how many BUGS, SNAKES, GATORS, ETC. would be waiting for THEIR CHANCE to attack her on the side of the road?)  She squeezed over against the door and kept staring back and forth between the road and the dark rear view mirror.  Was it still there?  Was it looking at her?  What if it was gone?  Where was it?

She rocketed out of the Hammock, past Marineland, and into the brief spot where A1A widens and has street lights next to 3 high rise condominiums.  THERE HE WAS!  He had spun a short web and was HANGING FROM THE REAR VIEW MIRROR.  OMG!  If she took a curve too fast he would start swinging and swing RIGHT INTO HER FACE!!!!

The street lights disappeared behind her; she and her passenger were thrown into pitch darkness again.  She slowed a bit so she could navigate curves without causing the spider to sway or swing.  She couldn't see him at all and hoped against hope that she wouldn't FEEL anything for the next several miles while she pushed ahead in the dark. 

When she entered St. Augustine Beach and the accompanying street lights she looked for the spider; he was gone.  GONE?  Where was he?  She looked all around and twisted and fidgeted in her seat; one minute tensing because she thought she felt something, the next minute brushing herself off frantically.  For the next terrifying 6-8 miles she looked in vain for that spider - and dreaded feeling him on her leg or in her hair or on her arm, or ON HER NECK or ON HER FACE.

The sun was rising as she crossed the temporary bridge over the Matanzas  River into St. Augustine and there he was!  He was scuttling across her headliner "about 90 mph!".  Thank God, he was running AWAY from her.  She hurtled the last couple miles through town and down the cobblestoned and very bumpy St. George Street and into our parking lot.  She slammed on the brakes, turned off her car, opened the door, and tried frantically to get out of her car.  SOMETHING WAS HOLDING HER IN AND WOULDN'T LET GO!  It was her seatbelt.  She jammed the release button and almost fell out of her car.  She slammed the door shut and stood there for several minutes, just glad to be alive and spider-free.

I really tried not to laugh, because it could have been me and I would have been just as upset, but, the truth is, it wasn't me and I started laughing and couldn't stop.  That morning she didn't see any humor in the situation.  She demanded to know how she was going to get home; I suggested she leave her windows down so he could get out.

"NO!" Carolee said.  "Do you know how many creepy-crawlies live in the parking lot?"

I didn't have any more suggestions so I patted her shoulder and took my coffee back to the office.  I ran my fingers through my hair and brushed off my arms a couple times on the way.

I don't want to say Carolee was obsessed with this banana spider, but she admitted later she asked everyone that morning for an answer to her dilemma.  I don't think she met with too many sympathetic responses.  After breakfast service ended she asked Mike, our maintenance guy, if he had any bug spray.  He gave her a big can of Raid.  Carolee opened the hatch of her Yarus, aimed and fired.  She DRENCHED her car.  She said she could see the spray clinging to some webs in there, so she knew the banana spider had been busy.  She shut the hatch, then opened her driver's side door and DRENCHED her car in poison.  She sprayed until the can was empty.  Then she shut the door and went back to work.

When it was time to go home she took a couple of rags and used them to wipe her seat and the steering wheel.  She rolled down her window, but left the others up.  She drove home with her interior reeking of poison, one window down, and the air conditioner blowing full blast.  She didn't see the spider.  (That much poison probably disintegrated him!)  She had been home for about an hour when her significant other Russ said he was going to take the car to run an errand.  "OK," she answered.

When Russ returned he wanted to know what the HELL happened to her her car!  His hands were all sticky from the door, the steering wheel, the controls.  The interior was covered in something sticky and gross!  What was it?  She told him that if he ever LISTENED to her that he would know it was RAID and that she had bombed the car's interior to kill a spider.

Russell took the car to a car wash place and the rumor is he used the high velocity spray to clean the interior.  He never saw the spider.