Dock Spiders

Here is an e-mail from my youngest brother and my reply. It gives you a great insight into my families working dynamics:

From my brother Ken:
...that all pales in comparison to what happened to me last night, I'm just happy to be able to tell you about it today-that's how close I came to my demise.

I hope (and you probably are) sitting down for this. Luckily for me Sarah (his wife) was close by and narrowly saved my life.

Last night as the kids and I were watching an episode of Doctor Who (the good Dr. David Tenant) I needed to use the bathroom, so as I entered the washroom oblivious to what danger lay meer seconds away i proceeded to expose myself (literally) to the imminent danger.

On my way to a sitting position, I caught it out of the corner of my eye, on the edge of the bathtub, poised to strike, was the largest, hairiest, ugliest spider I have ever seen outside of a tank or on tv.

Needless to say I never made it to a full sit down and my scream of defence (not terror) brought the family into the bathroom as i pulled my pants back up the quick thinking Sarah pulled her shoe off and saved my life by striking down my adversary and flushing it down the toilet.

Here is my rely:
Funny, funny story, you could submit that somewhere for money!

Ahhh, I too have a spider story, though in this case it was Ellie (my wife) who almost lost her life. Friday after work Hailey (our daughter) told us she wanted "Me" time and we should spend the night on the boat. Who are we to argue with such logic.

There we were, at the marina, I had a rum and DIET coke, (surprise, surprise), and Ellie had a glass (plastic) glass of wine.

We were sitting in the communal area beside the BBQs when IT happened. A fellow, (Chesley, located on our Facebook), calmly pointed out to Ellie that there was a huge spider crawling up her arm.

I didn't actually see it because my military training took over and I performed a tactical physical relocation to the boat about 100' away. I was later told I was a very fast cowar....I mean runner. In my defense I was getting Spider Blaster from the boat.

I found the blaster, then had to clean my glasses, oh, then I noticed my bunk wasn't made to my exacting Naval standards so of course I had to strip it down and remake it.

So now I'm heading back to save my wife, you know our family motto, "Family First" But on the way, as I was passing the washrooms I noticed a patrol of five members of the enemy spider clan. Big suckers they were. Hmm, what if the Spider Blaster didn't work? I would look the fool now wouldn't I? I decide to do a pre-emptive strike first as one cannot have the enemy behind him. I begin to sneak up on them. Remember they have 8 eyes each, multiply that by 5 and you get the odds that are against me. I go in regardless. I do wish the screaming would stop from the BBQ area, or was that screaming my battle cry? Details are fuzzy here. I do a chemical attack on this group, their deaths are slow, glorious and hopefully painful and full of remorse for being born spiders. I then made it back to the BBQ area but there was no sign of the enemy. It felt good to be a hero.

I was exhausted.......Allan