Wednesday, November 30, 2005

What did you learn in school today, honey?


Last night while telling their father about school GooseyGirl saw something crawling across the ceiling. "Daddy, look! It's an arachnid!", GooseyGirl hollered. Sure enough, there was a spider crawling on the ceiling.

Being the man of the family, Shawn got up and attempted to reach this spider but since the ceiling is 9' tall, he was unsuccessful. GooseyGirl brought him a stool and that helped get him a little closer but not quite all the way up there. Keep in mind that spiders make Shawn squeamish... very, very squeamish.

Shawn decides that while he cannot reach the spider himself on the stool, a child sitting on his shoulders WHILE he is standing on the stool, could reach it easily. BirdMan, being the brave little man he is, volunteers for this dangerous assignment. You must remember that BirdMan is the biologist of the family. He tells us he has been born to care for animals. The last thing he wants to do to any critter is kill it, especially something he just studied in school.

BirdMan gets atop Shawn's shoulders. Shawn climbs up the stool. Mr. Spider watches all of this transpiring and starts forming a plan.

This two tiered man-boy-spider-killing-machine approaches the spider and BirdMan reaches out with his little wad of tissue to get the spider which is now directly above Shawn's nose. Of course, BirdMan is simply trying to gently pluck the spider from the ceiling in order to lovingly carry it to a new home outside. He has no intention of killing the thing.

Shawn isn't aware of this aspect to the plan.

The spider goes into free fall right in front of Shawn's face. Shawn tries to stay calm but his suddenly loud high-pitched voice gave him away as he screams out, "GET IT! KILL IT! SQUEEZE IT!"

"Ummm.... where is it, Dad?", BirdMan says.

The other two cry out, "It's on your leg, Dad!"

Shawn got the child off his shoulders and got off the stool in one fluid motion. I never knew he had that talent!

We found the spider dangling from Shawn's pants. I suppose the rapid twitch of Shawn's leg must have convinced the spider to make a run for it because the spider bounced to the floor. BirdMan then spent the next five minutes finding a way to gently cushion the spider in the tissue in order to carry him outside. Shawn's heart rate was still racing as he kept saying to BirdMan, "Just kill it! Step on it! Smoosh it!". But BirdMan was committed to helping Mr. Spider relocate to more desirable neighborhood.

More than once BirdMan would stop, backtrack, find the spider again and pick it back up, only to drop it two steps later. Of course, before we said goodbye to Mr. Spider the kids had to count his legs and body parts.

I should have had the video camera going. We could have won a lot of money.

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