Our house on post was a two bedroom duplex with a good sized garage and a pretty big yard. Behind our yard was nothing but trees, exactly what this country-raised girl needed. We were one the edge of the 'back 40' where the Army did all their training and field exercises.

We moved in at the beginning of September and by the middle of the same month, my husband was deployed for 12 months to Iraq. It was hard to be in a brand new place by myself. I am good at imagining the worst so I thought of those trees and how nobody would see if someone snuck in my back door. I left a light on in the house so that if someone was there I would see their shadow under my door.

It was scary and hard. It took a lot of prayer, but I got through it. Our house made a lot of sounds and it sounded like someone was moving around in the bathroom at night when nobody was. Even other people would make comments about how many noises our little house made. But I got used to it and settled in and felt safe and comfortable.

Then came spring.

One evening I left my room and went across the hall to check on my daughter. On the way back I almost tripped over a huge spider standing right next to my door. Right next to where I had just stepped when walking through the doorway. This spider was big enough it would have taken up my entire palm if I could hold a spider that size without having a heart attack.

I had no bug spray or any other kind of chemicals to kill it with and it was big enough I didn't think I could go at it with only a flyswatter. I wondered how crazy I would look if I knocked on a neighbors door to ask if her husband could come kill my spider. Too crazy, I decided, so I called my brother. He would kill it for me if he could, I knew, only he was 7 hours away in my hometown.

I knew I needed someone to know that I was getting ready to undertake something dangerous in case I didn't make it. They could send someone for my daughter.

While I had him on the phone, I got the biggest, heaviest shoe I could find to go kill the spider. I snuck up on it in the hallway and lunged. At the last second the thing dodged my weapon and into the bathroom. It got between the door and the frame where I couldn't get to it with such a big shoe. I tried and tried but it would only lunge at me between my own strikes. Finally, it took off into my bedroom and hid under a blanket of Lillian's that was on the floor.

I beat that blanket for a full minute. Then, my brother said the words that still make me shiver. "You are going to have to look." I picked up the blanket to check that the spider was indeed dead and *sigh* it was.

After that my mom thought she would have fun with it and told me it was probably a baby spider and now the mama would be coming after me. haha, mom!

I never did see another one so big, but I did see a LOT of them after that day. If they were small enough, I would just drop a heavy shoe on them. If they were bigger, I learned to spray them and just wait until they were dead to sweep them up. If I squished them, they would splat all over the floor (eww!) and make a bigger mess to clean up.

I got handled it, but I never could get used to moving something and finding a spider under it. It would make me jump and squirm every time.

Eventually, my husband came home and became the spider killer. He was amazed at my cool, collected attitude toward the spiders, but inside I still had the shivers.