The Tale of Two Spiders

I am in the throes of cleaning out the junk in our basement, which means piles and piles of clothes and toys are right now in various stages of sorting before we pack them all up and take them to the appropriate place.

That is when I came across this:

This toy kept the boys very busy when they were younger. How it works is: you pour different colors of goop into the molds, put them in the 'bug oven' and wait for it to set. It's the boy version of the Easy Bake, only instead of cupcakes, you get creepy little bugs and spiders. Did I say they loved it? We had a whole bag full of their creations, as you can see:

Don't they look realistic? When I came across this little bag of bugs from the past, it reminded me of an incident that happened around the time all these were made.

One night, we returned home from dinner, and as I was walking down the hallway, I saw what I thought was one of these:

It was sitting right in the middle of the hallway! Those boys, they never pick up after themselves, I remember thinking.

As I reached down to pick it up,

however,

it SCURRIED into the hall closet! It was real and I was totally freaked out!

It was actually one of these:

A huge wolf spider.

Now, I wasn't expecting what I thought to be a plastic spider to go running, but once I realized it was real and it was IN MY CLOSET, well, I didn't sleep very well that evening! We never did find it and now just thinking about it makes my skin crawl! These spiders are so big that you truly can't step on them to kill them. They are as scary in the real life as they are in that picture, just trust me on that.

I like the plastic ones so much better. But still, I think it's time for them to move on.