Along came a spider and sat down ... above me

We were about to sit down to eat when I saw it on the ceiling. My heart pounded.

“Sawyer,” I said calmly to my son, “you go that way.” And then to my friend: “Niki, you back into the kitchen.”

There must have been something about the tone of my voice because they did what I said without pause. Then they looked up, too.

“Oh. My. GOD. That is huge,” Nike said. Sawyer cussed. It was the biggest spider I had ever seen.

We debated options. “Hair spray?” Niki suggested. “We have to smash it,” Sawyer demanded. My 6-foot teenage son is terrified of bugs. He doesn’t care who knows it.

I grabbed a plastic container from the kitchen. We would trap it.

I stood on a chair. What if it attacked? I lifted the container toward the spider. Could it take out three of us at once? BAM! I trapped it, sliding on the lid.

Niki and Sawyer cheered. We opened a bottle of Prosecco.

I texted a picture of it to my friend Aaron: “What the hell is it?” He told me to Google “Huntsman spider.”

That could be it. I read aloud from Wikipedia.

They can travel extremely quickly, often using a springing jump while running, and walk on walls and even on ceilings. Yeah, we got that.

They have been known to inflict serious defensive bites. … their vision is quite sufficient to detect approaching humans or other large animals from some distance.

Not quite sufficient enough. Niki and I high fived.

The spider and I eyed each other through the plastic. What if it had family that would avenge its death?

“Set it free,” Aaron texted. I could almost hear the spider: “Do it.”

Oh, all right. But I’m going to drive it around the block three times to confuse it before I let it go in a nearby vacant lot.

I don’t want it to find its way back.