A Black Widow in the Wrong Place

When I was around 6 years old, my brothers and I were playing outside.  My mom was sitting on our deck reading in the sun.  Beside our house is a rain ditch.  The water runs into a pipe that brings it out in the lower driveway and it pours out onto the driveway to go about its own business.

We had decided to see that, if we got a bucket of water and poured it down the drain, the person in the lower driveway could block the drain up and keep the water from flowing.  It was working splendidly until we got to our second or third round.  It was Brother's turn and he was clogging up the drain with pine cones and such.  Big Brother was about to go up to join me when he glanced back and saw… can you guess?  There was a black widow on Brother's back.  When Big Brother saw this he immediately told Brother about it.  Brother didn't believe him so Big Brother shouted, “Mom!  There’s a black widow on Brother's back!!!”  Mother rushed down the path with lightening speed and flicked the black widow off of Brother's back with her bare hands.  Then, with her slippers on, she stomped the life out of that poor spider!

Now she regrets killing it a bit but there wasn’t much of a choice at the moment!  And after that, I had a wonderful story to tell all my friends about Mother and how she had killed a black widow with her “bare hands.”  I always put emphasis on the “hands” part.  I was proud of my terrified mother who had been absolutely shocked to learn that a spider that could kill her child in a matter of days or hours had been on his back!  But, Brother is very alive to this day!