ALL CREATURES, INCLUDING HAIRY AND FAST ONES

I love the great outdoors.  there runs through me deep love and great admiration for the Creator of it all who paints great landscapes in vivid colors, smells and textures.  I am in awe of the creatures that abide in nature - all of them having their created place within the food chain of creation, serving a God given purpose in the circle of life both vegetable and animal.  I do have appreciation too for zoo animals - those from around the world held in a strange sort of captivity for us to ooh and ah over as we might never get that close to that critter otherwise.  There is a safety in zoos - creatures are kept out of harm's way of people creatures and vice versa.  It's a good system.  24 years ago, when I was pregnant with my daughter, we bought a house, our first house.  We couldn't afford much and well, like the old adage says, "you get what you pay for".  The first week living there we realized very uncomfortably that the preceding owners, who had indoor pets, had left us with a huge infestation of fleas.  They didn't seem to bother my husband at the time, but they ate me alive (I am much sweeter obviously than he was!).  We bug bombed the entire house twice - spent the night with family and thankfully they did not return!   One early morning I was sitting at the kitchen table when out of the corner of my eye I saw something sitting on top of the spindle of the early americanish cane bottom kitchen chair sitting across the kitchen.  I took a double take.  It appeared to be a large rubber rat that was perfectly balanced on the high back part of the chair.  I laughed out loud at my mate who no doubt was trying to scare me.  Before that thought even finished in my head, it moved!  I screamed and it ran, and I mean sprinted across the room in a mad confusing dash of not knowing where it needed to go to get away from me.  It was most definitely alive, moving and appeared to be a ground squirrel, a piney, a chipmunk - whatever name you choose to use.  I was 8 months pregnant with no bra on having just crawled out of bed.  Straight out the front door I ran seeking male critter assistance from the neighbor man!!  Ok, I am a bit rattled now; fleas and a chipmunk.  Ugh, these things need to be in their natural habitat not visiting me in mine.  One day in the months soon after the chipmunk made a surprise visit I flipped on the kitchen light early one morning to see the floor move in a rapid succession of cockroaches.  I had a meltdown right then and there.  My creature tolerance was already low and this, well this was just down right creepy.  I had visions of them crawling over my newborn daughter in the dead of night!  I waged war once again, and again and again with them until I think I finally killed off the population of them.   Walking into the laundry room one day I see something slither quickly across the floor - a snake!  Oh mind you it was only a small garter snake, but it was a snake none the less.  And, it was in the house not in the wild natural outdoor habitat.  Once again, I called the neighbor over who fearlessly came and removed the snake from the laundry room.  I never went in there again without shoes on:)   There was also the time yellow jackets decided to take up residence inside the house and also box elder bugs came in droves.  But, the ultimate scariest creature was what I saw one day across the kitchen on the kick plate, that space underneath where the floor and cabinets meet.  It was a big spider.  Oh yes, you say, how big of spider was it?  It was larger than an average size hand when spread out and furry like it just came from the hairdresser. It had huge hairy legs and just the mere sight of it (never saw or have seen since then anything like it) made my heart race with fear.  I stood frozen as I tried to even wrap my mind around what kind of spider that could possibly be - a tarantula the previous owners must have had for a pet that got loose!  How to kill it quickly became the rapid fire thought.  I could tell by looking at it that it had some weird sensory ability that sense movement - I feared it would hear my heart beating loudly or hear my breathing!  If I took a step it would run like a gazelle being chased and disappear in some crack or crevice where it would most definitely return in the dark of night to crawl on me.  What to do?  The only thing I came up with was to gently reach down and take my shoe off and hurl it across the room and hope that it landed with deadly accuracy on the spider before it scurried away.  That space where the spider stood only offered maybe 4-5 inches of a kick plate bulls eye.  I think it's eye moved as I gently leaned over to remove my slip on shoe.  In one movement I hurled the shoe as hard as I could in the exact location of the gargantuan hairy beast.  The shoe and my aim could not coordinate a hit.  Never have I seen a spider move so fast - ever.  I never saw that spider again.  No doubt it was alive and reproducing within the space of my house somewhere.  I'm not sure how long the average life span is for spiders with a pony tail.  Never was I as glad as when we sold that house and moved away from Critter Haven Acres.