Shiver! Ssspiders must be the creepiest crawlies of all.
So it boggles the mind to meet someone on the South Coast who keeps 36 of them as pets.
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Our Facebook page recently carried a video of a VERY brave Sunwich Port paramedic, Vikki Pretorius, ‘playing’ with her ‘Angel’… a GIANT Chilean rose hair tarantula!
Herald journalist Shona Aylward then wrote a stunning story about how Vikki conquered her fear of spiders and now cares for them.
Fascinating, for sure.
Alas, it was also enough to make this self-fessed arachnophobe break out in a cold sweat.
Especially as it brought back horrific memories of one dark, scary night in a camp along the Kunene River in the Caprivi Strip, back in the days when there was a Mexican stand-off between apartheid troops and liberation forces in Zambia and Zimbabwe.
It was a press junket and we were put up at a place called ‘Hippo Camp’ just outside Katimo Mulilo.
Ice cold beers aplenty… a fantastic sunset while sitting at an outdoor, solid Rhodesian teak bar counter overlooking the river… the distinct call of two fish eagles in a treetop… hippo snorting just below…
Ashamedly, wartime ‘luxury’ at the expense of taxpayers for military correspondents. We were far away from any firing line, but certainly at the mercy of the South African military propaganda machine and… mosquitoes which were the size of budgies. They were able to suck us dry right through our denim jeans.
As the evening wore on, the rather stern camp commander barked: “Our lights work on a ‘generrratorrr’ here which we turn off at 10pm SHARP! Make sure you are in bed as it gets very dark.”
After making a dent in their liquor stocks, we duly hit the hay with minutes to spare. There was thick cloud… extremely hot. Lying there under a mosquito net, joking with fellow journalists, I decided a sheet was sufficient cover.
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The next sequence of events is ingrained in my psyche forever. It all happened in a split second.
I threw the blanket off, a spider the size of my hand ran up my chest… and the lights went out!
Screech! The bungalow went into total panic, everyone scrambling for cigarette lighters and matches while I beat myself about the body and head in a vain bid to swat the spider.
We never did track the monster down, but it was a long, sleepless night waiting for it pounce.
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