I remember there is a time where, um, we got into camp late in, I think, in coastal Oregon or maybe southern Washington. We had drove — driven up from California that day. And, uh, we were hungry, we were starving. So, it was dark out. We set up camp. While I got camp ready, um, my girlfriend began, you know, making a fire so we could — I wanted hot dogs, you know, something quick and tasty and so um yada yada yada, we, we do that, and we sit down to eat hot dogs at the picnic table, and my girlfriend puts her elbow down on the picnic table. And it’s dark, uh, but immediately she feels a sharp pain. Something has bitten her. And we don’t know what it was, but she doesn’t handle pain well. So it was, uh, pretty traumatic, um you know. I can’t remember if there was tears, but maybe. And the best thing I could think to do was to have her go to the car where there’s light, and I was gonna go get her some ice to put on it because it was swelling up.
Um so, that’s what we did. She went to the driver’s seat, I went to the passenger seat. And, um, I reached in the back and got her ice, and I sat with her to comfort her. And after, like, a minute, she looked over at me and she was like, “Oh my God.” She’s like, “Don’t move.” I was like, “What’s up?” And she’s like, “There’s a giant spider over your head.” And, um, I, I noted that there was indeed a spider over my head. And so then we got out of the car, and kind of panicked. The dome light was on so we could see the spider. The spider got a little spooked, and it climbed along the ceiling toward the back of our car, which is where all of our belongings were spread about. We had been on the road for weeks at that point, and it was just a mess back there. And so then we had to figure out what do we do about the giant spider in the back of our car. Um, and it was kind of high stakes because if we opened the door and we tried to knock the spider out of the car, but instead we just knocked the spider down into our belongings, we would never find that spider. In fact, the only way we’d find it is probably when we are reaching for our clothes a few days later into one of our travel bags, and then you discover there’s a giant spider down there.
So it was uh — it was pretty high stakes. I’m overstating the size of the spider. It was not a tarantula. It was smaller than that, but bigger than the types of spiders I tend to see in Michigan. And so the, the plan was to take like a Nalgene bottle. You know like one of those plastic water bottles with the pretty big opening up top. The plan was to slowly and very carefully open up the Nalgene bottle, reach in, and then stick it to the ceiling, basically surrounding the spider until the spider fell down into it. And we were successful, and by we, I mean me, because my girlfriend was not messing around with that spider. Um, and we trapped the spider in that bottle, and it became our pet for the remainder of the evening because we didn’t want to let him lose by our campsite because we weren’t sure, like, that it’s gonna — we just pictured him like running into our tent or something. So, we hung on to him for the rest of that night and, uh, until the next morning when we went out to breakfast, uh, out in the desert because I think we were making the turn driving back home at that point possibly.
I just remember being at like a diner that had just limitless open space behind it, and my girlfriend made me go release that spider. And I did. I dumped him, and he began running right away the minute I dumped him out. Um and I panicked and began running away and I dropped my flip flop. And I had to run back and get my flip flop. Finally made it to my car, [and] life went on. So I don’t, I don’t know anything about spiders — don’t know what kind of spider it was, probably wasn’t harmful, but spiders are creepy. And um, that’s literally probably the closest running we’ve had with a wild animal, quote-unquote.