Trapdoor Spider

“Damn!” Crouched over rocks in the Sonoran Desert somewhere outside Tucson, I smacked my calf in response to a painful prick. Or maybe it was a bite. It was definitely an attack. “What the…” Swatting away the offender, I swore again and looked at the inch-long, fat, hairy, yellowish-brown thing that I had just killed as it clung to my finger. “Gross!”

Doug stopped scraping dirt from a rock and looked in sequence at me, my leg, and the ugly thing that clung to my fingertips. He took my hand gently between his calloused ones and inspected the insect. Leaning in even closer, I could feel his breath. Then he ran his hands along my legs to examine the point of attack. This was supposed to be a romantic getaway—spend a few days in the dessert where Doug could take some pictures for an article he was writing. I pictured it all. We’d stay at a cute B&B, eat at a remote roadside cafe, and get to know each other better—but his breath on my hands and his hands on my legs was not the intimacy I had envisioned.

“Trapdoor,“ he muttered, returning his attention to the bug.

“Trapdoor?” My therapist had told me that I had constructed my whole life as a series of trapdoors. Getting out of boarding school by getting drunk. Getting out of my parents’ home by marrying Rex. Getting out of that with an affair. Getting out of after-work drinks and long weekends with boring girlfriends by feigning migraines. Doug was supposed to be the trap door out of my current relationship with Chaz. “Why did you say trapdoor?”

“Trapdoor spider,” he replied. “Quite rare! Oh my god, what a find!” My calf hurt like a burning stick from hell and this guy was ecstatic about a bug named trapdoor. “Member of the Ctenizidae family of the order Araneae. A mygalomorph.”

“A mygalomorph?” My life had been reduced to a mygalomorph? The idiosyncratic, good-looking guy who had the potential of being the man of my dreams, the trapdoor out of my current life, was fading quickly into a senseless mygalomorph. He looked around and pointed to a little ditch in the dirt.

“See that? And the tiny shredded cobweb over it?” I looked but did not see. “It’s the trapdoor. These guys burrow into the ground and spin their silk—they don’t make webs—with bits of dirt and plants to camouflage the opening. Then they pull the door shut. That’s how the spider gets its name. Trapdoor. They hide in there holding onto it with their claws.” Claws? “They have sharp little teeth.” Teeth? “They puncture the skin when they come in at an angle.” Why was he telling me this? I didn’t need to know about claws and tiny teeth coming in at an angle. “It must have thought you were prey,” he explained like the nerdy archeologist he was, then kissed the wound tenderly.

I recoiled as a smile creased what had been a handsome face minutes ago. Now it was gruesome.

I had to get out. Doing some quick calculations, I figured we had hiked in about 30 minutes. I’d just hike back and drive into town. Town? All I could recall was a gas station minimart about 15 miles before Doug turned onto a god-forsaken dirt apron that presumed itself a parking lot. While planning my escape, he prattled on.

“They’re usually nocturnal, you know, which makes this an even rarer find! They…

“Doug, don’t you have to suck the poison out of my leg? Or else they’ll have to amputate it? You know what. Maybe I should go to a hospital or something.”

“Don’t be silly. It’s just a bite,” he laughed. Laughed! I’d been attacked by a hideous monster and he dismissed it. “You suck the venom out of a venomous snake bite, and that’s only in an emergency. This isn’t an emergency.” It was to me. “Besides, this little fellow isn’t poisonous. You’re not going to lose your leg. You’re not going to die.” How did he know this shit? “Unless you’re allergic to them, that is,” he added as an afterthought.

Why did he have to go and say that? I was perfectly fine—well no, I wasn’t perfectly fine—being bitten by a spider, but now my mind was working overtime. What if I was allergic? What if I suffered anaphylactic shock? In the middle of nowhere. I began to feel faint.

 “It’ll be itchy like a mosquito bite for a few days. That’s it. Come on let’s keep digging.”

No. While Doug was looking for petroglyphs, I was looking for a way out. A trapdoor. But it found me.

“I’m leaving.” I started walking in what I thought was the direction of the car.

“Where are you going? The car is that way,” Doug pointed slightly to the left of where I was headed. “I can’t have you getting lost. It’s just a spider bite. Come on. I want to find some petroglyphs. I need to photograph them. I’m on deadline. Then we can leave. I promise.”

I couldn’t escape. Doug was looking for petroglyphs. I was looking for a way out. A trapdoor. But it found me. I was trapped by a trapdoor spider.