Attack of the Wolf

   Back when I was young, one of my biggest fears was spiders.  I was terrified of any and all of them.  I suppose this came from the fact that when I was a wee kid, a spider of some sort bit me and caused me to fall quite ill.  It was right after a hurricane swung through the area and knocked down a huge hickory tree.  Being a kid, I had no interest in cleanup after a storm so I played in my new "playhouse" which was the uprooted tree.  Yep.  A spider did not care for me being there and bit my neck.  For the longest time afterward, I was terrified that another spider was "going to get me".  That bite left more of a mark on my brain than on my neck!

  Well, then after another hurricane (Katrina), another spider decided to take a nip at my knee.  This was a black widow and should have set the fear in stone but it did just the opposite.  As an adult, I could see that the bite was not the end of the world nor even the end of me.  I treated it and got over it.  Since then, I think I have been bitten by umpteen billion spiders and never even fret over the bites.  Today was no different.

  While planting peppers, I noticed a lovely wolf spider trying to dodge my feet.  Obviously, she was hiding out right in the row I had dug for the pepper plants and was a tad confused when her hiding spot disappeared. So I would not step on her, I scooped her up and moved her about two feet from where I was working.  That short trip brought me a nice bite!  Silly spider!  I was just trying to help.  I survived. She survived.  We will share the garden space and probably have many more encounters before it is all said and done.