Can You Run Faster if You Have More Legs?

Earlier this evening I had a rather amusing encounter that I decided I simply must share with you.

I'm sitting on my bed trying to decide whether or not it's worth the effort to move every single box and object from the left side of my room by the window in order to unearth a rather large rather fat spider that scuttled its way in a few minutes earlier. It stopped, we had a stare-off, I grabbed the closest thing that could capture it, a mini Chinese tea cup, from my dresser, and the race was on. 

I jumped off my bed, lunging for the ominous monster, but he saw me coming. I desperately threw the cup in its general direction, but it simply bounced off the carpet as the furry alien shot around the corner of my bed, safe for a moment. I followed in hot pursuit, attempting one more time to capture it. This time the cup stayed firmly put, and I emptied out a large canning jar as backup (something I should have done much earlier!). For some stupid reason I decided to lift up the cup to see if my nemesis was underneath. If he had been, he would have flipped that cup up and over like a weightlifter in a category below its weight limit and I would have had to figure out some other clever way to capture it. 

Alas, like the magic game where you have to guess which cup the egg is under and you never get it right, the spider was nowhere to be found. I stared sadly at the empty patch of carpet. Then revenge took hold and I grabbed a super bright flashlight, started pulling things away as fast as I could, shining the light into every dark corner I could find, hoping to see evidence of scuttling legs and black beady eyes. To no avail. 

A while later, I heard my mom stumbling about out in the kitchen and decided to find out why she was still up. I found out my dear fat furry friend either has an identical twin (which I hope not!) or decided it was too bright in here and so he rushed out as fast as his 8 legs would carry him and skedaddled right into my mom's room!!! She was not amused, she also couldn't get something to smack him with fast enough, so she grabbed the vacuum cleaner. She thinks she got him, there's less stuff under her bed to hide behind. I hope so! At least now I can sleep in peace.