Spiders!

I was standing in the mess hall line at the Marine Base

in 29 Palms, California, in the Mojave Desert in August.

A warm and lovely place.


I noticed a black widow spider on the collar of the Captain

next to me.


"Captain, don't move." I said and tried to brush the spider

off of his shirt with the brim of my cover (cap). The spider

deftly dodged under the brim and ran down

inside his camouflage shirt.


"Hold on," I said and slowly and carefully unbuttoned his shirt, which probably looked odd to the rest of the Marines in the chow line. When I unbuttoned the last button the Captain stripped his shirt off and did a war dance, slapping every inch of his body to get rid of or kill the spider. Spider was nowhere to be found, which disconcerted the Captain even more.

Then the Captain said "Next time, don't help."

The ingrate. See if I ever help him again, after all I did.

_____


The Marine Corps did not issue us spiders - there were plenty of them for free.

We had lots of black widow spiders at the Marine Bases in 29 Palms, CA and Yuma, AZ in 1967-68.

I had many of them under my desk. I would periodically beat them down with a broom and burned them out a couple of times with a torch, but they always came back.

But they were nice and never bit me. I suppose I should be sorry for being mean to them.

One time I was laying on my back on the floor of a room, with my head slightly under a desk.

And there was the red hourglass of the spider's abdomen inches above my large and long nose. Startled me a bit.

_______________


Another Marine Spider story. One of our Marines really liked tarantulas. He captured a large hairy one in 29 Palms California and brought it back to his apartment in Berwyn, Illinois.

Tarantula got out of the box and moved to another apartment. When they discovered spidey in their cupboard the residents convened a hasty kangaroo court and quickly evicted our spider loving Marine and his tarantula.

Craig Hullinger

Marine Corps Regular and Reserve 66 to 99






I also have a childhood memory of Marlin Perkins from the TV show Zoo Parade holding a large tarantula

in his hand and saying, " as long as I don't make any sudden moves he won't bite."