so Last night was the end of the karate year for all our kiddies and we had a christmas party thingy for them. It's as much an excuse for us to enjoy a bit of cake and biscuits and stuff like that as it is for them, it must be said. Proceedings last night were lighter, and less tense, than proceedings at the corresponding fixture last year, because last year was The Accident (see entry #81 on right; be warned, though - it's bleak), and we got to hear all about it. This year, though, we were excited to a point because of proceedings on Monday night, and we wanted to see what would happen on Tuesday night at the kiddies' party. Because on Monday night, we found a gigantic spider in the karate club, or dojo (But I think dojos are cooler, so we will stick to club for now). It was Big and Hairy, and didn't seem too perturbed by our presences in there as it sat near a back corner in the middle of the floor. Keenan herded it into a bag traditionally housing focus mitts (sort-of hand-held punching-practice targets) and we took a good look at it through the clear plastic. It was biggish - maybe the size of the palm of my hand (far as I'm concerned, any spidery thing bigger than a fingernail is too big) and hairy, jet-black with long, fat legs and gigantic fuck-off fangs. You could even see its simple eyes it was so big. One of my juniors, Dane, claims a certain amount of arachnophobia and hit the high road to the hell out of there as soon as someone said "hey - spider!" but we eventually decided to not squish it (Wim's suggestion. We shaved his eyebrow off in one of my very first entries) and Keenan took it outside to release it near the skatepark, far away from my car. General consensus was thatit had come through the open window from outside and had somehow escaped being spotted by our grannies class earlier. "Was it a rain spider?" someone asked. We didn't know. Apparently rains spiders are grey-brown; up in Zimbabwe, they are rusty-reddish brown. This one was black as the blackest night. "A baboon spider?" No - those are also grey brown, and as big as a large tarantula. In fact, it is called the African Tarantula after its latin name, like the Mexican red-kneed tarantula is common to Mexico. "A wolf spider?" someone suggested. We didn't know. "Why do they name some animals after other animals?" Wim muses. He's just been awarded his BAchlor's degree from UCT - hats off to big W. "Wolf spider, crab spider, baboon spider..." he continues, completely missing the point, chinning away with gay abandon as we study the ginormous fanged monstrosity in the bag. "Then again, a baboon is a monkey, and you get spider monkeys, so perhaps they have just run out of names?" he suggests. Coincidentally, and perhaps proving the point, we have a scientific photograph calendar here in my office at UCT, and the November/December photograph is of a beetle, Lepithrix pseudolineata, which happens to be commonly called a spider-monkey beetle - double trouble! Class proceeded with no further disruptions, and we fought and grappled and sweated our way through the next hour. However, as we were wrapping up, young Jason let out a "no ways!" for lo, there was a likewise second spider, same species, same nasty McNasty characteristics, but on a micro-scale. This one was but a teeny tiny little slip of a thing, probably only an inch long. In fairness, it would have freaked me out had I not seen one three times its size earlier. This little oone was in the opposite corner diagonally across from where we had found the first one. All eyes immediately went to the ceiling; it was unlikely that two of these things had fortuitously come in, and we were thinking they were living in the roof of the club. Several people made mental notes to bring in Doom foggers - essentially mini fumigation devices to kill everything in a room; two or three foggers will do a whole house. Press the button, evacuate the building, return three hours later to an insect-free environment. Et cetera. Anyway, Keenan convinced this little titchy one to get into the same bag that its mother was shepherded into earlier and we were going to put it outside too. Off he went while the rest of us lock up for the night. Suddenly, from outside: "Oh my God!" I thought he'd been bitten; but it was much worse. "Guys, you gotta come see this!" As one we ran outside, me grabbing my phone in case we needed to phone for poisoning assistance or the snakebite unit or something. We get outside, and Keenan is motionless, standing facing the outside wall, like that guy at the end of the Blair Witch Project as it all comes to a head and the movie ends. We follow his gaze to a third spider on the wall. It is twice the size of the first one, about the size of my hand. "Maybe it's just the time of season for these guys," Keenan offers. "We've been here for 10 years; you've been here for 7, K. I've never seen one of these spiders ever before, let alone here." "True." The spider scuttled menacingly into the grass as we gave it a wide berth. Keenan threw the little one into the grass after it. When I got home, I sprayed the car with loads of insect killer. The mother of all spiders was within pissing distnace of where I'd parked, and I was not about to take chances with them having hitched a ride to our house and setting up camp in my roof, thanks. One gigantic spider assaulting the house per year is more than sufficient, as described a handful of entries ago. No such spiders at the kiddies party, however - we looked. -d-