Thursday 19 August 2010

Stacy vs. Nature: An illustrated saga

This post deals with a creature that looks like a spider but isn't. Some people call them harvestmen, some people daddy-long-legs..es. I'm not sure what it is in English, but in Finnish it's called a lukki, and that's easier to write than daddy-long-legses, so I will use the Finnish word. If you want, you can think of it as Dave.

So one day in 2008 I was perched innocently on the toilet taking care of some business. Leonard, whose name is Ari, was not home.

I was staring off into space quite contendly until I thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I focused my vision.
Oh my giddy aunt, I thought, because I'm British. A fucking spider. I must stress at this point that I'm not particularly scared of spiders, but these things are unnecessarily huge. My bowel movement paused while I inspected what was crawling up my wall. It was a lukki. Upon receiving this information, I jumped.
I kid you not, it was staring at me.
This carried on for a while.


I kept my eyes on it while I hurriedly finished what I was doing, and then tried to figure out what to do with it. Even though I wasn't scared of it, it was disgusting. I'm not sure why, but it repulsed me. However, I didn't want to kill it unnecessarily, which made my first idea null and void.
So I decided to find a glass and some paper, and put it out on the balcony. I dug through our cupboards and found the biggest glass I could. It was pretty big, a massive pint.. stein from Ikea. Trying not to turn inside out, I approached the bathroom with the glass. The lukki, or Dave, didn't move. Good. I carefully placed the glass over Dave the lukki, but failed, and one of his legs got stuck underneath the rim of the glass because, as I mentioned, they are unnecessarily large. Dave started to spaz out.

This was a new level of repulsion for me. It was freaking out because of its leg, which is understandable, but I couldn't bring myself to sort its leg out. Eventually I slid paper underneath the glass and saved the leg. After a ridiculously long time trying to gather myself, and still trying not to turn inside out, I got the lukki about 2 metres to the table in our living room.
There it sat, while I shook my hands and did that brr thing you do when someone tells you about headlice or that they had a spider on them once. I pondered leaving the lukki where it was until it died, but that would have been cruel, and I'd already got it two metres nearer the balcony.It was also taking me a stupid amount of time to deal with this issue. Time had elapsed, you guys. I sucked it up and opened the balcony door, placed the glass on the floor and wondered if the lukki would suddenly run up my arm when I tip the glass over. I went and changed my shirt to a sleeveless one.

There it sat. For a really long time. I periodically looked through my (locked) balcony door to see if it had fucked off, but it was still sitting there. I opened the door and looked to see if it was dead.
No.

It was fucking waving its legs at me in a freaky lukki wardance. I later told this to Ari, who said it was probably trying to scare me. I informed Ari that the lukki had been successful. I'm not sure why it disgusted me so much but I have never seen anything so gross before (I am serious. Blood, guts, snot, whatever, but this was another level). Just waving tiny harvestman threats at me. I was traumatised.

So two days ago, when I came home from the shop and decided to make some coffee, and a massive lukki came sauntering out from behind the coffee maker, I knew what to do.

Nature 1- 1 Stacy.

5 comments:

  1. Hahahahaha, Your funniest post yet Stacy. I`m wondering tho, did these episodes traumatise you that much that you now have an aversion to drawing legs? sometimes Dave has five legs and sometimes six and i can`t quite make out what has happened to your legs whilst you were perched upon the throne. Keep the blogs coming, they`re definitely worth a read :) lyl Mum

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  2. I love the fact that you've been wearing purple all those years ;)
    great post and illustrations, as usual, keep them coming!

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  3. Mum: I don't really know how many legs it had, especially since I mangled one by accident. My legs on the throne are fine :p

    Anonymous person -who-commented-after-mum: It is a wonderful hoodie :) Thanks for reading!

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  4. I HATE those freaking things! They always crawl into my home coming end of the summer. I usually use the vacuum cleaner to get rid of them. - Anni

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  5. Please add a warning in your blog not to drink coffee while reading. Feels nasty in my nose :)

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