"Save the Spider from the Foreigner!"

I found this picture on the internet, as I did not get a picture of my
new friend.  This one is probably similar in size.  

I would like to cordially introduce you to my newest acquaintance, his name is Huntsman Spider, and he is huge and scary. After looking him up on the internet I have learned that he actually lives almost anywhere that is warm including the Southern United States. However, he is reported to grow the largest (up to 12 inches across) in Laos, which is a short bus ride away from the house I met him in. Fortunately, the Huntsman I met was probably only about five inches across...but really, five inches is still a very sizable spider. After doing a little reading I have learned that he is not poisonous, and he rarely bites humans. He is very fast. He eats other insects, small lizards, and sometimes small rodents. He does not build webs but waits for his prey to come close to him, and then he charges and attacks them. This is how we met:

My friend, Pii Kwan, and I, were staying in an old, wooden, traditional thai style house in NE Thailand. This house was really awesome, but Pii Kwan and her family did not want us to shower in this house's bathroom. The bathroom was far nicer than many a bathroom I have seen, but her family preferred that we use the bathroom in her brother's house which was right next door. Her brother's bathroom is attached to the house, while the wooden house's bathroom is not, and it is tiled, while the wooden house bathroom is made of cement. However, the wooden house bathroom has a ceiling, and a real porcelain toilet, and I have used bathrooms that lack both of those things, so I didn't think it was necessary. Anyway, one evening I was collecting my things from the wooden house and heading over to Pii Kwan's brother's house to shower. As I walked toward the stairs, I saw him. He was huge. He sat perfectly still, right in front of the stairs. I froze, and stared trying to determine if this was in fact a real spider I was seeing. Pii Kwan's mother was sleeping already, so screaming was not an option. I decided that I would go to Pii Kwan's brothers house where my friend and her niece and nephew already were, and tell them about what I saw.

When I came into the house I described the spider to Pii Kwan and her niece and nephew. They looked alarmed and said that they would go take a look. I told them that I wanted to come, but her nephew motioned for me to stay, and Pii Kwan agreed, “you should just stay here and take a shower, it's okay, we'll take care of it.” I tried to not freak out every time my hair brushed my back while I was showering, I tried to keep my eyes closed as I rinsed the shampoo from my head, but I was thoroughly creeped out and felt the need to keep my eyes open all the time, frantically taking in my surroundings. I thought about how nervous they all seemed when I described Huntsman to them, “he must be very poisonous,” I thought as I finished showering. When I came back out to the main room Pii Kwan and her niece and nephew were lounging on the couch.

“Did you find him?” I asked

“Yes, we found him.” replied Pii Kwan.

“Oh good, is he dead?”

“No, he was very fast, we couldn't catch him.”

“You mean, he's still in the house?” I stared at Pii Kwan in disbelief, trying with all my might to not be a spoiled little American girl.

“Yes, but it's okay, we have never heard of this spider biting anyone before.”

I restrained myself from exclaiming that I did not want to be the first recorded case, I nervously smiled and nodded my head and said, “okay then...yup, yay for mosquito nets!”

Pii Kwan's niece got up as I started to leave and picked up a fan that her mother was going to let us borrow for the night. “Oh, I can carry that,” I said. She shook her head, smiled, and said, “may pen rai” (it's okay), and Pii Kwan told me that she loves to be helpful and to let her carry the fan, so we started to march back towards the house. As we climbed the stairs I nervously stared at the empty space where I had last seen Huntsman, “Oh God, save me, where has he gone?” I thought. And then, there he was. In the middle of the floor...waiting for us. I tried not to be too loud, but I could hardly contain myself, “Ah! THERE HE IS!” Pii Kwan's niece does not speak english, she said something in a soothing voice in thai, put down the fan then walked over to a pile of stuff in the corner. “Are you going to kill him?” I asked frantically, knowing perfectly well that she didn't know what I was saying. She picked up a hammer of the top of a pile of tools. “A hammer!” I exclaimed, imagining the horrendous scene of an exploding giant spider under the weight of a slung hammer knocking a giant spider sized hole through the floor. She did not respond. Instead she slowly walked toward Huntsman, got down on her knees, and quickly pushed him off the edge of the house (half of this house was not fully enclosed) with the hammer. I stared at her not knowing what to say for a few seconds, “he gone” she said in broken english. “Kop khun maak maak maak ka!” (Thank you very very very much!) I said, she laughed, and said, “may pen rai.” and then left me with the fan.

As I crawled into my mosquito net I imagined Huntsman crawling back up the wooden stilts supporting the house. It wouldn't take him long – he was incredibly fast and nimble for a beast of his size. Then I wondered why Pii Kwan's niece didn't kill him. That's when it hit me. This is a buddhist land, these are buddhist people, and buddhists don't kill...anything. As I thought about this I silently laughed to myself wondering if the alarm on everyone's faces wasn't because there was a potentially dangerous animal camped out on the floor of our house, but because they didn't want this innocent creature to suffer at the hands of a blood thirsty and crazed foreign girl.

I asked Pii Kwan about this later, and she assured me that her niece probably didn't kill him because he was too fast, but I can't help but think that if he's not too fast to push with a hammer, he's not too fast to squish with a hammer. Thus I must wonder if what was running through her mind was not, “I will help save my sleeping mother and this ridiculous foreigner from this venomous monster,” but instead, “I must save the spider from the foreigner!”