The Very Dramatic Story About The Spider In The Office

One of the magazines that I work for publishes DIY projects and yesterday one of the projects, which is a garden shed, was brought into the office (most of the projects are made outside of the office and then brought in once they are finished).

For heightened dramatic effect I shall now switch tenses.

Suddenly there's all this commotion in the hallways, and one of my co-workers comes to tell that there is a giant spider in the shed (and he's freaked out by spiders) and that if I want to do something about it (me being a bug-saving non-hypocrite (as much as possible) vegetarian) I need to be quick because people are amassing and are probably going to do something rather drastic (which I would find offensive). So off I go to find the shed, which had been lugged (or, rather, dragged, I'm sure) into a lift to be brought up to the 20th floor, and had then been left in the corridor outside the lifts.

My co-worker's wife, who also works in our division, but for another magazine, is also a bug-saving non-hypocrite (as much as possible) vegetarian. I turn the corner to find my co-worker's wife standing strategically (but at a safe, healthy distance) in front of the open door of the shed, while a bunch of our co-workers cower in corners nearby acting all freaked out.

So as I arrive (trumpet sounds! Whoo hoo! (I mean, in my head, of course, and actually only now while I'm writing this)), my co-worker's wife asks me if I'm afraid of spiders, so I say no (which is usually true, although large ones do actually freak me out a little (because they tend to like to jump...at you...for no reason...)), but I was being brave around these silly people in order to up my status of coolness). I could see that my co-worker's wife was also a bit freaked, but wanted to save the spider, so she was acting as this kind of nervous barrier between the spider and the evil people who may magically find bug spray and want to gas the living daylights out of the spider (she told me afterwards that there apparently is someone in her office who bug sprays everything, anywhere, at any time - even benevolent creatures such as geckos and lizards - with great glee).

Anyway, so my co-worker's wife is protecting the spider from a healthy distance from the cowering co-workers, and one of the food assistants from one of the magazines is running around trying to find a container into which we can stick the spider. I ask where the spider is, because I peered around the door but couldn't see it, as it was cowering near the bottom of the door under a strut-like piece of wood attached to the inside of door. So I bend down to look and, gawd. It's like 2cm (body) and 5cm (legs), which makes it one of the biggest spiders I've ever seen.

But now I'm committed (I mean to the task, not a mental hospital, although you may debate that endlessly in the comments section), so I ask my coworker's wife what she's going to do with the spider (because we're on the 20th floor in the middle of a concrete jungle, so where do you put such a thing? (This had been my wonder all along.)) so she says she'll take it to Tokai forest (which is on the other side of the peninsula (yay!) near to where they live) and release it. So I'm all "Ok!". So the food assistant meanwhile has found a larger container (the one they originally

had tried to use was too small), which has a hole in the corner so the spider can "breathe and stuff", so I grab it and coax the skittish spider (who by this time has realised something really weird is up) into the container (which went much better than planned...man, spiders are easier to catch than cockroaches!), and then realise that the hole in the container is rather big. Big enough, in fact, that the spider could probably squeeze through, and probably will try, so I quickly hand the container to my co-worker's wife with a piece of paper that the food assistant had given me, and tell her to block the hole and then Sellotape the hole or something, which she had already realised she needed to do. So then we parted ways with the cowering people cowering a little less, and now all interested in the container and slowly gathering to look. Because, you know, now they're safe.

As I headed off back to my office my co-worker's wife asked me not to tell my co-worker that she has the spider in the container and is taking it home with them to release it, otherwise he won't get into the car.

So I didn't mention it. But I really wanted to.