When I was in high school my parents were very free with us. They gave clear boundaries for our Friday and Saturday nights, and then they trusted us. Both my sister and I stayed well within those boundaries, and in doing so never gave them reason to question that trust. We didn’t have a set curfew, but we were expected to call keeping them informed of our whereabouts and to wake them up when we got home to check in. It became a great source of amusement for my sister and I to swap Dad stories from the nights we woke him up. He was always in a strange stupor that only deep sleep puts on him. He would say the oddest things as we laughed with my Mom, knowing that the stranger he acted that night, the less he would remember in the morning.

One night, long after my sister moved away to college, I returned home alone. I went through the usual routine of tiptoeing into my parent’s room to wave as I made my way quietly upstairs. Once settled in my own room I found I wasn’t completely alone. A small, black spider had stealthily crept up on me and I panicked. I approve of squishing, I just can’t do it myself. So I made my way back downstairs, heart pounding from the adrenaline of being so close to one of nature’s monstrosities, and woke Dad up. Being a male minority in the house, he had learned over the years how to have a good attitude in these situations. Despite his exhaustion, the late hour, and the absurdity of my request, he dispatched the spider and went back to sleep with very little grumbling. It’s possible he had perfected completing such tasks without ever truly waking up. I learned that night that in marriage I would need a squisher. Aside from being a fellow believer, it was the only “must have” on my mental quality-man-to-marry list.

I got just that in Brian. He chases, squishes, and generally clears out all the unwanted inhabitants of our house with ease. Maybe not without grumbling, but definitely with finality. And that’s all that matters to me. Sometimes I wonder how I, of all people, ended up living in a place with giant spiders and giant cockroaches and giant prehistoric insects, but God doesn’t let little things like that stand in His way. He gave me Brian for that.  

Ray’s room in the village.

Our various stays in Yall village this year have been strangely absent of the giant brown spiders that have plagued every village experience I’ve ever had here. That is, until last month. We stayed in our new house for the first time and I like the way this one is laid out. You step up into a small porch area and then up another step to walk down a “hall.” At the end of the hall you can turn left or right into the two rooms. The floors are made of bamboo and the roof is dried leaves woven together. We set Ray up in one room with her travel crib under a mosquito net, all the cargo and ourselves in the other room. Since the bamboo floors allow you to hear and feel every movement from one end of the house to the other, we have full knowledge of Ray’s pre-sleep flops. I had hoped that because the house was recently built the brown spiders would still be elsewhere, but unfortunately that wasn’t true.

The night before we left was the culmination of all my missed encounters with the brown spiders over the past year (after some brief research, I believe these are the common huntsman spider). Brian was about to preach at a night service in our family’s hamlet just outside our house, the sky was clear and full of stars, and I was content. Happy with how well Ray adjusted to the village this time around and happy with how I was adjusting to our weekends out there with a baby. Especially since it will soon be two babies. I took Ray back to the house so she could putter around the porch while Brian preached. It would be perfect, I thought. Putter a bit, watch Dad, enjoy the shooting stars, and then quickly fall asleep. But as I walked up the few steps with her in my arms, my headlamp caught the telltale glint of spider eyes that always causes my heartrate to soar. I stopped and looked more closely, hoping it wasn’t fully grown. Instead it was the largest I’d seen yet. Big, bulbous body with long hairy legs. It was right next to the diaper bag and right in the middle of the area I wanted Ray to roam. I was able to collect myself enough to slowly turn and find Brian. He wasn’t preaching yet, so I grabbed him, pointed to the spider, and walked far, far away. I heard the house creaking and groaning as Brian dealt with the issue and returned again as he went back to his seat. I put Ray on the porch to piddle, no obvious sign of the spider anywhere. Brian had done his job. For a while, Ray was content to pull items out of her diaper bag, but suddenly she started fussing like she does when she’s found dirt on her foot. She impersonated a flamingo trying to see what offensive substance was sticking to her skin, but I immediately knew what it was: spider goo. A puddle of it. I learned that night that it may have been beneficial to add “gut cleaner upper” to my list of must-haves along with squisher.