Late one night after closing down our little bar at SFM, I began my ‘swaggering stagger’ back to my hooch.
Let’s say I was slightly inebriated.
No, let’s say I was drunk.
No, let’s say I was shit-faced.
In Sinai, when I was there, lived a lot of species of ‘interesting’ creatures. To name just a few:
Camels
Bedouins
UNEF Soldiers
Big Ass Scorpions
Big Ass Ants
Big Ass Flies
Big Ass Lizards
One (only one–that was all our allotment allowed) Ex-Dallas Cowboy’s Cheerleader–long story–I’ll get back to that one.
Texans, lots of
and…
Big Ass Spiders
“Sun Spiders”
(What we called them—my research—and more recent experiences, have informed me that these are actually called ‘Camel Spiders’) Made infamous by a photo-shopped photo of two of them held by a U.S. Marine in Iraq, making them look as large as a house cat. I am getting off-track…
But Sun Spiders are in fact, quite large.
And fearless.
Just as fearless as a drunk twenty-one year old Texan.
As I was navigating to my hooch I came upon an unusually large sun spider strolling across the compound minding his own business. Imagine a scaled down version of one of those machine-monsters from the “War – of — The – Worlds” movie. How he looked to me.
What did our hero do?
Walked up and kicked him with his boot.
He tumbled over twice and tried to run away.
Oh hell no!
I kicked him again.
He tumbled over again, found his eight-feet footing and tried again to flee.
Oh HELL NO!
I kicked him a third time.
I was giggling and having a great time
But I guess by then he’d had enough.
He regained his bearings again, but this time he must have said to himself,
“Fuck this asshole!”
He started chasing ME!
I ran fast as I could, periodically looking over my shoulder, to my hooch, fumbled around with my hooch-door key, panicking. Got the door open, burst through, slammed it behind me and gasping and sweating fell down on my rack. My hooch-mates (both of them) asked me if the war had started up again.
All I could say was,
“Just don’t open that fuckin’ door.”