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Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Creepy Crawlies in my Tent

I’m not a big fan of spiders, but I’m not a squealer. When I lived in Aussie I was the one that got rid of cockroaches while the boys looked on. I don’t mind moths, I leave wasps and bees to their own endeavours, and although I won’t touch them, I’ll share my path with worms when it rains.

I did very well when a wasp flew in my helmet mid-ride during our first trip to France, even with a none-the-wiser Courts getting angsty at my lapse in navigation. I did even better when I found a spider on the inside of my sunglasses whilst wearing them.

I dealt very well with the cockroaches in Barcelona, even though I made Courtney leave the restaurant we were in when we saw the biggest of the lot. The waiter said they fly in from the massive trees that line the street but that didn’t mean I wanted them crawling behind me on the bench seat I was on, as one had.

A much smaller variety filled the trees of our campsite in Barcelona and apparently enjoyed the ride to Carcassonne when one crawled out of the folds of our packed up tent on arrival. The mouse I saw in the computer room in Barcelona lived to tell the tale too, but he kept his distance, and that made him cute.

Cormatin, as much as I love it, has tested my bug-surviving skills. Amongst the mole hills, massive orange, brown or occasionally albino slugs crawl the fields when it rains, or in the morning when you sleepily make your way to the toilet. We have found a big black and neon green beetle and several small fluro orange ones too. The beetles are fine, and I dealt with the bird-sized moth that landed on our tent one evening quietly.

It was the massive hairy brown spider that landed on my head, toppled down my shoulder and then scurried under my mattress while I was reading the global edition of the New York Times (first English paper or magazine or anything we’ve found in weeks, we devoured it) that caused me to jump out of the tent faster than I’ve ever moved in my life, and beckon Courtney to come and be manly and save me. At the time I didn’t know if it was a spider or a cricket or a grasshopper (both of which I’m fine with), I just knew it was massive, scuttley and that there was a chance it was a spider, so I was out of there. I was kind of relieved to find it actually was a spider, and huge, so that my tent-leaping was somewhat justified.

Cormatin is awesome. Cows and horses and cats and molehills are awesome. Cats with massive bulbous noses that you would empathise with a human for having let alone a cat, are awesome. But I will be a little bit glad when we get to a busier campsite with less… wildlife.


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