The Birds!

Every spring, the biggest group of birds I've ever seen (that is, until the next year when it gets even bigger) flies through Ogallala as it heads back north.  I don't even know what kind of birds they are.  All I know is that they vaguely remind me of my first horror movie (Birds) and, having watched it before my school years, how that movie was the only horror movie to actually give me nightmares.  I stepped out last night to greet the dogs and nearly shrieked at the overwhelming sound of birds chattering.  I picture the dead body with the comically bloody missing eyeball.  That image used to be the reason I would cry for my mommy when I still slept with a nightlight.  Most of those nights I skipped the nightlight and just left the light on.

I did end up screaming like a little girl today and it didn't have anything to do with the birds, who have since passed.  I was in the living room when I noticed the smallest thing hanging from my hand.  Then it started getting closer to my hand.  It was a mini-spider!  So, with Jim only a few steps away, I screamed and whimpered and did the whole "get it off! get it off!" thing you see pathetic girls do in the movies.
Jim is still laughing about it.  He told me he thinks it's sweet that I need him to kill spiders when he is around, but that I use my copy of Humility (great book, by the way) to smoosh spiders in the basement.  All of this talk of spiders and not being afraid made me think of another story I would like to share, so I decided to blog about it (this blog is going in a completely different direction than I planned!).
I used to be a housekeeper at a hotel.  It was small enough it was a housekeeper per floor most days, doing 20 or so rooms.  We had a cart with all the essentials that we pushed down the hall and we had a never ending supply of rags.
One day, about mid way through my hall, I saw a spider.  Now, the size of the spider is probably a lot smaller than I remember it, but it was huge.  I mean, size of my hand huge.  It was slowly making it's way up the wall beside me.
It was the middle of the day, so I was pretty sure I was alone but I didn't scream.  Instead, I grabbed a rag, covered my hand, backed up to the other side of the hall way, sprang forward to slam the spider into the wall... and involuntarily yell "DIE!!!!!!" probably louder than I've ever yelled anything.

Had I known that guests two doors down were leaving their room at that moment I might have waited.  The fact that they stood completely still while they stared at the insane housekeeper punching the wall makes me think they probably wouldn't have left the room had they known I would be there.  I blushed, mumbled "spider" and cleaned the wall off.

Hope you got a smile out of it.  As embarrassed as I was when it happened, I can't help but laugh, wondering how they tell the story.