The Tarantula and the Maid
By Donald Jones
Some things that are experienced by others may be very stressful to them while to others they appear to be hilarious. Such is the nature of humor. This is true about the maid we once had when I was seven years old. We enjoyed living in the tropics especially in Cuba. One of the perks of that time, was mom and dad had a maid furnished by the Navy. So they did not need a baby sitter. This maid lived with us. She washed the dishes and cleaned the house. She was a very pleasant lady. We had a room for her down the hall between my bedroom and my big brother.
The home provided for us by the Navy was a ground floor apartment in a large complex. The buildings were all painted yellow while the outside walls were all louvered horizontal panels about 4 inches wide from ceiling to floor stained a dark fruit wood color. They were covered with a screen. There was a crank on the inside so one could open the panels and adjust for air flow. They could be opened wide and give a full view of the out side or closed completely to keep the rain out. This arrangement made a very cool house when the wind would blow which it did almost every day. This was the design of all the outside walls around the apartment.
One night our house hold was awakened by a blood curdling scream from the maids room. Everyone jumped out of their beds an ran to see what was the matter. She was screaming and crying out loud speaking in Spanish. When dad got her calmed down enough for her to speak, she pointed to the bed, which was pushed up against the screened wall. There was a very large black hairy tarantula sitting on the out side of the screen. Apparently the spider in the cool of the night was wandering around out side and was looking for a dark place to hid and spring out on some poor unsuspecting bug. While exploring for a place to wait, he found this nice comfortable place where warm air was coming from . The maid had rolled over in her sleep and was sleeping with her mouth against the screen while exhaling from her nose. She must have awoke up in the night and looked out the screen expecting to see perhaps a house in the distance with a light on. Instead she awoke with a spider sitting on her face on the other side of the screen. With out doubt this must have effected her for years to come as it did me and my brothers, but not until after we stop laughing. From that day forward we made certain the louvered walls were closed completely at night. The spider of course met his untimely death at the heel of my fathers shoe. In those days a bug was just a bug and not an environmental helper that might have been just relocated. It turned out that after this incident, that a nest of these great hairy creatures were found hiding in one of the under ground water turn off boxes, located just a few feet from our apartment. They were all wiped out the next day.