Puppet Head

When I first moved from my hometown of Latin America, FL to the Horse Capital of the world 5 years ago, I experienced some extreme culture shock.

The insects are twenty times larger here. In the city I was born and raised in, we had a small, scarce population of wasps. Here, there is an overpopulation of these monstrous wasps the size of sparrows, and if one of those stings you, its time to call 911! In fact, one did sting me in the back of the neck one time, and I thought someone had hit me with a baseball bat!

Not only do they have giant wasps here, but they also have an entire host of prehistoric insects that can put a serious hurtin’ on you!

They have this type of exotic ant that has a fur that looks more beautiful than almost any insect I’ve ever seen before, but if it bites you, I’m told you will be screaming in torture for days.

Another example: where I grew up, you might see a horsefly every 15 or 20 years. Here, I’ve seen some sort of freak, nightmarish, mutated super-gargantuan horsefly that must be at least 50 times the size of any horsefly I’ve ever seen in my life! If that thing were to bite anyone, they would be in dire need of a blood transfusion! If it bit a horse, that horse would probably die from blood loss! One time I tried spraying one with wasp and hornet killer, but it only flew happily away, slightly annoyed that I had gotten it wet!

I was also used to having small mosquitoes where I grew up. Here, however, the mosquitoes are so large that the hospitals use them whenever they run out of needles!

In my hometown, most of the spiders only get as large as your thumbnail. Here in Redneck land, they get larger than your hand! Not only that, but you have deadly ones here as well. Walking into spider webs that stick to your face, arms, hands and clothes has become a daily nuisance. I have sprayed some of those monster spiders with bug spray, and they don’t even seem to notice. One time when I sprayed one, he jumped 3 feet from the wall at me! I think he was attempting to grab the spray can from my hand and spray me with it!

Several weeks ago, my friend and his family came to visit. My friend still lives in the city where I grew up—none of his escape attempts from drug-infested Fascist Land have been successful yet. After eating dinner at my house, his entire family and I went for a walk. His daughter suddenly put her hand over her ears, with a look of shocked terror, and cried out, “What’s that weird noise? It’s so loud!” Living in the city, she had never heard the sound of crickets before.

Another thing that I had to get used to was the weather here. I was raised in a very tropical climate. I moved up here during the coldest winter so far, and I thought I was in Alaska. My sister bought me some type of coat that you unzip and it becomes two coats, which is something I had never heard of before. Where I grew up, we hardly ever needed to wear a sweater, let alone a coat.

It was also hard to get used to people actually waving at you. Where I grew up, if someone was waving at you, it was usually with one finger, and it was usually because you had done something in traffic to tick him or her off. Also, people up here use guns for hunting, which is a completely new concept for me. Back home, people use guns only for robbing other people, or to shoot people that wave at them.

The hardest thing to get used to, upon first moving here, was when I began hearing this strange language that I was not used to hearing. It was very odd, because I could actually understand what they were saying. To my utter shock, I soon realized that the language that almost everyone spoke here was English. I had gotten so used to everyone speaking Spanish that hearing everyone speak English sounded very strange.

When I bought my first house 8 months ago, I had no idea that it was an official gathering place for hundreds of different species of spiders. You’re not going to believe this, but I found out later that my house has actually been designated the official spider headquarters for the entire Southeastern United States. I would have thought that my Realtor would have informed me of this fact, but she did not.

[OK, I admit it---I’m making that up. My Realtor really DID inform me of it…just kidding. But seriously, what I meant was, that I’m making up the whole thing about my house being “the official spider headquarters for the entire Southeastern United States.” Well, duh! Of course you knew that already. How did you know? Because you’re incredibly smart, and you immediately pick up on things like that, that’s how! Well, actually, you knew because my claim was incredibly ridiculous. But I’m only admitting this because I want you, as the reader, to know from the outset that this blog is not to be taken seriously. So don’t be calling me a liar or anything like that, because I’m only kidding The stuff I write on here, although it may be based on fact (for example, I actually do have a spider infestation problem in my house, and I have found and killed a bunch of different types of spiders, including Black Widows, and many of those spiders have been pretty large), it is at best exaggerated, and at worst, a bunch of made up nonsense. Why am I writing stuff that is made up nonsense? Because I’m attempting to write something that is hopefully funny, and that you, the reader, will hopefully find fun and interesting to read. Also, because I’m trying to be a little like Dave Barry, though I know I’m light years away from even hoping to be a tiny bit as funny as he is. But, if it turns out that no one even finds my blog remotely funny or even interesting, I will probably just go back to killing spiders, and forget about writing crazy stuff on this blog. But since this is my first attempt, I thought I would give it a shot. I don’t know yet if anyone will find this blog funny or not, so, for the moment, or at least until I find out, I’ll keep writing. OK, so now that we have established that, let me get on with my story. And please don’t interrupt me anymore!]

I suppose I should be proud that I live in such a famous house. On the other hand, it is annoying to have to share my house with 58 different species of spiders…um, I meant hundreds of different species of spiders…all of which have had hundreds of thousands of babies in the past several years (which, I am told, are officially referred to as ’spiderettes.’) As a result, every night I find myself killing at least 3 of the largest, ugliest, meanest suckers you have ever seen in your life. I find them either in the bathroom (usually sitting on the toilet), climbing up the wall (usually chasing the roaches that also inhabit my house), or walking across the carpet (and tracking dirt with their little spider feet, often after I’ve already spent an hour vacuuming the carpet!). When I used to live in the big, bad city, we had very few spiders, and the ones we had were no bigger than a nostril hair. But the ones I constantly find in my house are so big that you can actually see their nostril hairs!

A few years ago, I heard this guy on a radio talk show who called in to tell about his spider experience. He said that he found a huge spider in his garage one day and, weighing in at a hefty 285 lbs. (the guy, not the spider! Pay attention!), he did the only thing a manly man could do at that point: he ran and got a shovel! Well, that full-grown, 6’4” tall, 285 lb. man who was an ex-football player (actually, I don’t know if he was an ex-football player or not; it just makes it funnier when you add that in) lifted up that big shovel over his head, with those big, muscular arms of his, to kill that spider. At that point, the guy said, and I quote: “That giant spider—and he must have been at least a foot wide, I’m not kidding! He was huge, man! I mean, gigantic! I think he was one of those wolf spiders, man!—That spider, he lifted up those big, hairy front legs of his, and it looked like he was gonna attack me! He looked mad! So I dropped that shovel and ran! As fast as I could! I got my big bumble butt out of there! But then, I thought to myself, ‘Why am I running from a spider? I’m 6’4” and 285 lbs., and that spider weighs less than a pound. I’m hundreds of times larger than he is!’ So I got up my courage again, and I strutted like a man into the den and I got my shotgun. Well, I’ll have you know, when I got through with that spider, there was nothin’ left of him! After I had blasted that spider to smithereens, I thought to myself, ‘That’ll teach you to mess with me, Mr. Spider!’”