Spider Attack: How I Lost my Sunglasses, and Almost my Life

Le just left Kona today. She came in for a lovely visit. We went around the island--from here to Volcanoes National Park, to Hilo, then Wimea, Hapuna Beach, and then back home. We did a lot. But lets skip forward to our horseback ride to Kealakekua Bay.

We went on a fantastic trailride with a dude named Bones. Awesome views of the water, nice horses, etc.

But lets go to the point where I lost my sunglasses. It was about halfway down a long path overlooking the bay and some ancient Hawaiian foot path/highway, when I rode through a spider web. In fact, the spider web landed all over my face, and as it did I saw a huge spider coming down out of the tree. This was the largest spider I'd ever seen outside of a zoo--perhaps about four inches across, yellow and black, huge body, skinny legs.

It landed on my shoulder and started crawling around. It was about this time that I--a rather large, somewhat burly, typically unflappable man--started screaming. No, it wasn't a loud, long, feminine shriek. It was more me yelling in a panicked, high-pitched voice, "Get it off me! Get it off me! There's a fuckin spider on me! Fuck! Fuck! Oh Fuck! Get it off!" I let go of the reins and started flapping my arms around, and tried hitting the spider off me. I succeeded in knocking my sunglasses off. I thought the spider was gone, but there he was on my leg. He'd crawled down my torso to my legs and seemed to be crawling back up. I kept hitting at him, and he finally fell to the saddle, and then jumped off the horse. I figured I'd saved myself from certain death. I could only imagine the humongous fangs that thing had and he was so close to planting them in my flesh.

I took the reins back, and noticed my sunglasses were gone. I told Bones about the huge spider.

"Oh that? That's a good spider. They won't hurt ya'. They just crawl around on ya'. 'Bout only thing on this island that'll hurt ya' is a brown recluse. That'll kill ya'."

And that was that. Bones is a man's man--the type of guy that makes the Marlboro Man look like a devotee of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (coincidentally, my brother is one, but that's just a side note). I feel like such a schmuck.

Not only that, but I need new sunglasses. Goddamnit.