Until just last year, we grew corn in our garden during the summer. We'd plant the seed in spring, and watch as it sprouted. It would grow, until it reached our knees, at which time the cats, Tardzilla and Captain Apathy, took to playing "Jungle Cats," in it's shady tunnels. then it would grow some more, to waist height, shoulder height, and finally Shaq height. By midsummer, it loomed over us, a vibrant forest that would bear tasty treats come August.
I always looked forward to the corn until about halfway through the harvest, when suddenly corn was the opposite of appetizing. It was best husked, boiled, and slathered in a generous dose of butter. The first few weeks of Corn-uary were always the best. Corn on the cob every night.
It was, of course, during the first week of Corn-uary that I developed my irrational fear of corn plants. "Go get some corn from the garden," my mom told me.
Honestly, I had my doubts. I didn't even like it outside - there were spiders and bees and insects I couldn't identify out there! What if something bit me and I died of malaria or something? Besides, the internet was more amusing.
But I went anyway. It can't be that bad, I reasoned, Mom comes out here to do this all the time. By the end of this thought, I'd crossed the scant ten yards between the patio and the corn patch. I took a moment before immersing myself in the jungle to review how I was supposed to chose ears. It's the ones with the brown stringy bits instead of the not brown ones, right? There was no one there to validate my guess, so I pushed on.
The first and second ears were effortless. I managed to pick beautiful specimens. I became careless.
I reached for the third ear, noting how it looked just like the two I'd just picked. I had my hand around it and was pulling it off when I caught sight of my worst enemy, a spider. Normally spiders are content to flee like hell's hounds are on their eight hairy, creepy, ugly as sin heels, but not this one. There was a nanosecond where my two eyes somehow made contact with it's four clusters of eyes before it charged. I jumped back and to the left, nearly tripping over and destroying a tomato plant in the process, and saving my own life at the same time. My nemesis didn't have time to adjust for my change in position; she kept charging and, reaching the end of her leaf, leapt. She flew through the space my body, more specifically my chest, had just occupied and landed a good three feet away from the plant she'd launched from.
Being the wuss that I am when faced with nature, and especially spider and nature together, I screamed and ran back inside, all three ears of corn in hand. I was never going to pick corn ever again. Never. Ever. And I told my mom as much.
She gave me a look that said it all, "how can my daughter be afraid of the outside world when I was raised on a ranch? What the hell?" I didn't notice however, as the adrenaline of having narrowly escaped spider-inflicted death was still pumping through my veins. With an exasperated sigh, she took the corn from me and proceeded to prepare it. The first ear was perfectly okay. The second ear? Ditto.
On the third ear, she found an egg sack. And suddenly Kamikaze Spider's actions made sense. She was protecting her young, and that required attacking me. I would have felt bad, if she hadn't brutally attacked me, only letting up when I limped away to the house. Heck, I would have felt bad if she wasn't hairy and eight-legged with a face only a blind, retarded monkey could love. It was a mercy killing, really. Her children would have been just as hairy, and leggy, and ugly. Also, I wanted my friggin corn.
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