Bring On the Flying Monkeys...

As many of you know, hiking is not all sunshine and daisys. More often than not, hiking can be a very dangerous pastime. Now I won't say that I never get into any tight spots because occasionally I do. But not of the white water rapids - cliff hanger type of situation. As a mater of fact it's been years since I've gotten myself into anything that was more than an uncomfortable situation.
 Three or four years ago when we vacationed in the Smoky Mountains I had the opportunity to hike up the mountainside to view a particular waterfall and let me tell you, that got real uncomfortable real quick. I wasn't really used to hiking straight up! Even there alone in the woods on the side of a mountain hundreds of miles from home the closest I came to any sort of danger was of the imaginary sort. You know bears, mountain lions, rock slides (I even gave a quick thought to the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz)- none of which ever materialized outside of my imagination.
 Mostly I only have to worry about slippery rocks that might lead to my backside getting wet, poison ivy, mosquitoes or spiders. And particularly spiders that tend to make their web across the trail that I've chosen to take a nice relaxing hike on. There's nothing more unsettling than to be trekking along when suddenly you find yourself with a mouthful of cottony web and a spider skittering across your face only to disappear somewhere between your eyes and the closest branch! As much as it gives me the heebie jeebies, once I've convinced myself that the elusive arachnid is far from my person I can't help but laugh a little bit at what I must have looked like walking along only to suddenly break out into the herky jerky! Personally, I'll take the bears, mountain lions and rock slides over a spider in my hair any day. And oh yeah, go ahead and bring on those flying monkeys too...

Just Bad Luck...

I want to make this clear right off the bat- I do not like spiders. The mere sight of one of these eight legged arachnids ( I suppose that's being redundant but I want to make sure my point is clear) makes my toes curl. I've had way too many encounters with these creatures to ever change my mind!
Just in the past few days while we have been cleaning shelves and moving machinery at work to get ready for auction I personally have had my hands mere fractions of an inch away from several, what seemed to be very large, brown recluse spiders.
Then there was the time that I was lifting an overhead door at another warehouse and as I got under the door and pushed up I smashed a black widow in the palm of my hand. Fortunately she was face down at the time. Brrrrr-dang, that still gives me the shivers.
Now, some spiders are definitely not as creepy as others. Any of the fuzzy kind just seem a little more cuddly than others. Did I really just say cuddly?! Anyway, like that little black fuzzy jumping spider that you find on your house plants. That's what I call them, mainly because I probably won't ever study spiders long enough to know all of their names. Those come the closest to being as cute as a spider can be.
I've heard that the Japanese say that it's bad luck to kill a spider and of course we could all say "Yes it is... for the spider!" And I'm really very big on the whole live and let live thing but it's too hard for me to think about the fact that I'd better get it before it gets me and that always seems to win out. As a matter of fact this whole post has brought to mind the fact that my neighbor pointed out a spider on the ceiling last night and I somehow let the moment pass and now as I look up, it's gone. Well, hopefully he didn't run into the ol' gal in the photo here because, apparently she doesn't do well with others. (Maybe that's why they're called Crab spiders.)
Doesn't she know that that's just... bad luck!