Man Versus Wild

Or Woman... and family and friends versus wild.
I learned something new last week. Rather than wonder and hope that in an emergency I would act on behalf of the safety of my children, I learned that I would. Well, it wasn't a life-threatening emergency, technically. Had I been driving it would have been life threatening to everyone inside or near the car, and had I been anywhere near a car door, it could also have been life threatening for me at least, but instead I found myself trapped and terrified in the back seat of a minivan.
Never rent a car from National.
So, if you are like me, whenever anyone catches their breath and says something like, "There's a..." then you suffer a minor feeling of panic. If they say something like, there's a big...." then the panic is, obviously, a little bigger. Then if they finish it with something like, "There's a big turtle over there on the beach!" You calm yourself and realize that everything is okay, remind your heart to beat again, and feel a little silly. But when they finish it, like Ashley did last week in the car, with, "There is the biggest spider I have ever seen." and she is looking inside the car and slowly picking her feet up off the floor, and you look and see that her original thoughts that it was a crab are not completely unfounded, because if I were using my hands, I would show you that it was slightly larger than a grapefruit and faster than any spider I have ever seen, you have basically two choices, 1: faint or 2: use superhuman strength to overcome the panic attack and save your children from this eight legged kitten (I would post a picture, but looking at them makes me nauseous.). I made a split second decision to act without thinking.
The spider had climbed up the sliding door by Owen about a foot above the handle, and fortunately we had stopped at a stoplight (not that it mattered to me). I hurried and opened the door hoping that I would not have to scream and knowing that I would really be in trouble if it jumped on Owen. I would probably chooses option 1 at that point. The big brown hairy thing wasn't too keen on my plan, and apparently had another one which included staying inside the car. As I was opening the door, spidey grabbed on to the inside of the car and took off, running past Dave's mom. She opened her door, and chased him even further into the car and up under the dash out of reach. We spent the next ten minutes on edge, shifty eyes alerting at any dark spot or movement, and wondering how the spider got into the car in the first place (probably the same way the ants - yes, ants, the leftover yoohoo in the bottle under the seat, and the hair pin in the back seat all got there - from the people who rented the car before us. Like I said, never rent from National.).
At our destination, Dave's dad searched the best he could and a lady laughed it off, "Oh it was probably a cane spider." Oh, yeah, no big deal. I wondered if she thought we were exaggerating. Who could laugh off a spider like that. Well, apparently, if it was a cane spider it wasn't poisonous which brought me absolutely no comfort.
The whole way home and every minute I spent in that car after the incident could be characterized as alert and easily excitable (and when I say excitable, I mean panicked) until almost a week later. Dave's parents finally found our giant tenant shriveled and dried up on the window, no doubt dehydrated from being in the car all week and looking for a way out, but still alive - well, not for long.