Spidertude

"Come and look at this!" Andrew called excitedly from down the hall.

I spat out my mouthful of toothpaste foam and walked into the hall.

"Wha...ew!"

There on the wall was a huge, ugly spider. Bigger than the last one, anyway.

Andrew got the fly swatter and smacked it. It fell off the wall and onto the floor. He picked it up in a Kleenex and showed it to me.

"See, it's just a little guy," he mused.

Having curled it's sickeningly long legs up in their rightful rigor mortis position he really did look like a little guy. No bigger than my pinkie fingernail. Don't let that fool you though because he looked huge on the wall.

"Do they have spiders in Egypt?" I asked. Of course, I knew they had spiders in Egypt. I just wanted Andrew to tell me that they wore clown suits and danced around.

"Of course," Andrew said. He left off the part about clown suits and dancing, though, so I was still worried.

"What kinds?" I asked.

"Normal ones, I think," he said. "Except they've got 'tude," he added seriously.

"What's tood?" I asked, thinking it was some Arabic expression for deathly poisonous venom.

"Attitude!" he said like he was some kind of hip hop star.

Okay, Andrew, no more staying up late.

I researched the spiders found in that region today. Most of them are okay. There's a white widow spider, which isn't as common or as poisonous as the black widow. And then there are camel spiders, which aren't spiders and aren't even poisonous. Still, I don't think I'd ever want to meet one if it wasn't in a glass box.