Lanette Hewlett:  

Arizona Adventure Every so often something very funny happens in life. This story was just too good, scary and humiliating to keep to myself. So, I am calling it my Arizona Adventure. Niles and I vacationed about 8 days in Arizona at one of the gorgeous resorts in Oro Valley. This was in the Sonora Desert region. On July 4th, we spent a lovely but very warm morning at an outdoor desert garden and museum area. There are some beautiful examples of desert gardens that one could create in this arid region. We were enjoying the sights when I took time out to visit the ladies room. The restroom was very modern and very clean but full of deep shadows. I found myself thinking and hoping that no creepy crawly critters of the desert had entered the restroom before me. I glanced around and entered the first stall. I gingerly lifted the toilet seat just to make sure nothing was hiding there that might bite my behind when I sat down. It was very clean with nothing crawling around. I put a tissue paper cover on the seat and I then I finally sat down with confidence, being assured that I was all alone in the stall. A GOOD feeling. This desert is home to tarantulas, scorpions and other crawling things that I didn't want to think about. I was about finished doing my thing when I reached over and gave the toilet paper a gentle tug. There, sitting on the second square of toilet paper was the biggest, creepiest shiny black spider that I have ever seen. It almost filled the tissue paper square it was so huge. Well, that was the end of my peaceful setting or should I say sitting! I let out a huge screech/scream and the next thing I knew I was on the other side of the stall with the toilet seat cover still stuck on my behind. I threw off my blouse and shook it out and did a spider dance trying to make sure that the spider hadn't leaped onto my person or clothing. I shook out my hair and removed the toilet seat cover which after all that, was still stuck to my backside. Could I possibly be in Arachniophobia II and I was the star? All I know is that after that visit to the bathroom I was terrified of every toilet paper roll in Arizona! I pulled myself back together and tried to walk out with what little diginity I had left. The native Arizonans told me that it was probably a Western Black Widow. "They grow to be a really large size here." they said. Yikes! I did not take the time to flip it over and look for the hour glass on it's tummy. I now dream of spiders when I go to sleep but I must laugh at the hysterical episode in the desert. I didn't think black widow spiders grew to be that big or do they? Our next crazy adventure happened on the flight home. We were leaving Tucson and heading to Atlanta where we would board our flight back to D.C. We were seated in the next to the last row in the back of the plane. The last person to enter had a Siamese cat in a vinyl type cage and they entered and took the last seat on the plane which was right behind us. Then they stuffed the cat and it's cage underneath Niles's seat. Since when do the pets fly coach? From the moment of take-off I knew we were going to have an interesting flight. As the engines roared down the runway, the cat went berserk. It began this low moaning h...Expand for more