Love is an Action

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Royal Naval Lieutenant Jim Donnelly hated spiders.

Small money spiders were bad enough, house spiders terrified him, and the thought of a palm sized hairy tarantula anywhere near him was enough to bring on the threat of a heart attack.

Being attached as a Naval office the Royal Air Force base at Airport Camp in Belize, he found himself in remote rainforest country that was sovereign territory.  A central American country, harboured between Venezuela, Guatemala and Mexico, meant that there was a cornucopia of every nasty thing migrating from the North and the South and the West and arriving in the rich swamps and rainforests of the Belizian jungle.  Big cats, crocodiles, manatees, snakes, bats, monkeys, mosquitoes, birds, butterflies by their thousands and of course spiders. 

Spiders in every tree, on every branch, under every bush, little spiders, big spiders and huge bird eating spiders. This was wild creature central for Gerald Durrell aficionados  like myself. A bazillion spiders in every direction from where Jim was executing his Naval duties. Each one a threat and ready to pounce on him if he got within a hundred yards of one. 

His office, his shower block and his bedroom should at least have been safe, protected zones from anything larger than a mozzy. 

But it wasn’t.

He found it hard to sleep at nights knowing that a hungry family of the worst of the worst huddled together in a makeshift prison just a few metres away from his pillow, and were all very keen to get free in the dead of the night and scamper in all directions in the search for freedom and food.  Possibly even tasty human fingers, ears and eyes to liquefy with toxic flesh-digesting venom and then suck and gorge on the resulting mush. 

He quaked at the thought, but he had no choice but to be there in the thick of the jungle.  Ships were more sterile places, but the naval postings officer saw fit to send Jim to three months detention in a living zoo of everything he hated. 

“I hate fucking spiders. Keep those things away from me or I’ll fucking kill you. If one of those things of yours comes near me, you are dead”. He was mean. And he was bigger then me. And angry. As member of the Senior Service he was trained to look down on the flying mortals of the RAF, even if we were a similar rank.  

Our billet was a wooden structure on stilts, ten simple bedrooms, five on each side of the corridor, stuffy and strongly scented by the warm jungle just a few yards away, sometimes blown by a cooling evening wind but mostly, being right on the equator, it was normally just bloody hot.  

Third world electricity provided lighting and for the lucky ones, air conditioning. Not so for Jim and me.  Aircon was replaced by slatted windows. To open them would allow a breeze and beasties to come. To close them would trap the heat but keep the beasties out.  Jim had closed his, taped it up, hermetically sealed his room from the eight legged, ten legged or thousand legged things that threatened to slink around his precious environment at night time. 

Jim’s bedroom door was directly across from mine, separated by no more than a metre of floor.  Tightly slatted lengths of timber made the walls, but the doors were the work of local tradesmen more likely to have completed their apprenticeships with a rum soaked fisherman than a master craftsman from the big city. 

The result was that bedroom doors were an exercise in gap filling rather than elegant architecture; more to preserve dignity than prevent the migration of species.  I came to know the missing dimension of wood at the base of the doors so well, having laid one terrible night with my head on the floor of my bedroom, looking right through the gap under my door, past the gap under Jim’s door and right through to the navy rucksack in his bedroom.

The larger than arachnoid size gap told me that somehow I was going to have to sneak into Jim’s room on a rescue mission at four AM in the morning whilst he was asleep, and locate one or more errant escapees from my hungry little menagerie of red kneed tarantulas, otherwise I was dead meat and my fatherless children back in England would have to fend for themselves. 

A couple of months before all this happened, I was at my desk in the Ops centre in the middle of the admin site in Belize.  Dark skinned, pidgin speaking locals were everywhere working as cleaners, batmen, cooks and general assistants. I got to know a few of them quite well; it was always a joy to share a bit of banter with them. One of them was my spider supply guy. 

He rushed into my office one day with an overly huge tarantula, squeezed into a metal mug, covered by a large leaf. He upturned it in the middle of my desk and the monster flopped unceremoniously with a soft plop onto my open A4 diary. 

I leaped back as it made a move for freedom in my direction. It’s keeper was quick to recapture it, shepherding as much as possible of it back into his mug saying “okay maaan dis gooood one. You like? Just five dolla man. She lovely”. 

He normally provided dead, formaldehyhded specimens in old metal food tins for my side-line job as a trophy framer. The job had been passed from my predecessor as both a duty and little money spinner; framed butterflies and tarantulas to take home and please or terrify the family. The deal was that spider delivery guy would provide, to order, a dead and preserved specimen ready to be pinned to a board and then framed with a glass front. 

This live tarantula deal was an unexpected deviation from protocol.  I assumed that he had just found this one and rushed from under the eyes of his foreman on whatever job he was doing in the hope of making a quick buck from me. 

After a little shooing and pushing with a pen, the beast on my diary stayed dormant, fangs raised high in alarm, long enough to place my peaked RAF SD hat on it that was already sitting on my desk. I dropped the hat over the top of the spider, put my hand gently on it in case it moved, took a breather, looked at his captor open mouthed said “okay” and paid him the five dolla, wondering just what the heck I was going to do with, or explain away, this very alive and slightly scary thing, in the middle of a group of senior officers offices. I was already in enough trouble for other animal misdemeanours, not least my new notoriety with THE scorpion incident with THAT SSAFA woman, so this new capacity for angst worried me a little.  

The protocol of dumping live tarantulas on my desk was to set off an alarming chain of events in the weeks and months to come that I could not have foreseen.  

With big Mr Hairy Spider on my desk under the hat, I soon saw the upside. 

I had regular visitors, needing to inquire about the flying program. Whilst they were in front of my desk and discussing availability, I would move my hat when they weren’t looking and expose Mr Big Fat Spider.  The result was always astounding and brought great joy to the sadistic side of my nature. Always a scream, sometimes a rush for the door, always swearing.  

Until, after a few exposes, I lifted the hat and there was no spider there. My heart skipped a beat as I jumped up and hunted frantically around, over and under my desk.  I hadn’t seen it escape and it was hardly small and unnoticeable. Nothing to see.  I lifted my hat again hoping to find it there, but nothing.  Shit, I started to look further afield around, over and under the guest seat, my seat, the cupboard, my clothing, my trousers. Nothing. 

I sat down, bemused, lifted the hat up in dejection and turned it over.  

And there it was.  Tired of my little japes, it had crawled into a corner in my hat and gone to sleep there. Unwilling to move, four legs snuck into a fold of the cloth and the other four holding on to the inside of the hat with little pincers. Its furry legs were LONG, black and orange, with spiky hair visible all the way from its fat body right down to its little padded, pincered feet. 

I gently turned my hat back over and placed it on the table again, wondering what to do. 

Amazed by what had gone on, I gingerly lifted up the hat every few minutes, checking that it still there and really was as big and spectacular as I had originally imagined.

It was! 

Lunchtime came by and everyone departed for the Mess dining hall except me.  I needed my hat.  It was uniform and the rules stated that it always had to be worn outside. It provided a conundrum for me in that I was hungry, but my hat was already occupied and it would be both (1) unfair and (2) unwise to wake the sleeping giant. 

I needed to gather some courage. A lot of it. But I could see some fun coming up that might just make it all worthwhile.

I stood up very gently turned the hat over , held it at arm’s length and waited for movement.  Nothing happened.  I looked into the hat.  Mr Big Fat Hairy Spider was still there. 

“I have to do it.  I just have to do it” I said to myself.   Keeping the hat so very still, I moved my body under it, closed my eyes and very, very gently lowered the hat onto my head and held my breath. 

Nothing happened. 

All was quiet so far. I reckoned I had about a two hundred hard walk to go before I could cause a brilliant disturbance in the Officers Mess Cloakroom, but I had no idea what would happen once I started walking. I didn’t have a plan for the cloakroom, I just knew it would unfold one way or another the way the best japes do. 

I took the most gingerly step that I could, keeping my head absolutely still. All was quiet. 

I took another step. And another and another.

All was fine until I was halfway down the main corridor, on my own. I felt movement. This thing was coming alive.  I froze, knowing that I couldn’t take my hat off because these things can move like lighting and one stuck on my face, or down my collar wasn’t a great option. I let out a quiet “nnneeeaaaaoooohhh”, a kind of a pleading no to the heavens whilst cursing my own crass stupidity, once again. 

I could feel it walking around the inside of my SD hat, plodding across my scalp, looking for a way out.  I couldn’t do anything. A civilian member of the admin staff had been working a little late and came out of her office ahead of me. She looked at me and I managed to get out a “Hi Carrie”, “go on up I’ll catch up with you” from my frozen position, two hands out in front of me, head slightly to one side.  She said afterwards that she thought something was strange. I was not moving, looking a bit pale. “Montezumas revenge” she thought……that I was having a little private moment, the result of the slightly dodgy food that one gets after a night out on the town. 

No I was in terror, awaiting a double bite from its very large fangs, normally used to sinking into smaller animals than me.  But the eight legs padding around my scalp slowed down and stopped as I felt it return to its original hiding place.  I waited a few moments before starting to walk again.  

I walked the majority of distance to the Officer Mess as though I had wet my pants. Arms out in front of me, stabilising every movement, legs a little apart, that wierd walk that nothing wants to get moved around anymore than absolutely necessary lest a little surprise leaks out.  It was certainly adrenaline raising.  

But as I got towards the Mess door, I was getting a bit more confident that calm had descended, and all was well.  I waited on my own in the cloakroom and very gingerly took my hat off, eyes closed, waiting for a runaway monster that I would claim no responsibility for whatsoever if it got free.  But  he was happily there, sat in the fold of my hat. 

The fun started to unfold as I waited for a few fellow servicemen to return the cloakroom on their way back after lunch. Just as my mark was about to pick his hat up I turned my hat around I shouted at the top of my voice. 

“OH MY GOD!! What the F**K IS THAT” It turned the place into uproar. Everyone checked their hats for months afterwards. 

Mr Big Fat Hairy Spider and I became best friends for almost two years after that and we travelled the world together. He made a transatlantic flight with me to UK. He became a squadron mascot called Harry the Bastard (HTB) and struck fear into many an unsuspecting policeman or car passenger.  HTB for short because the words “You Bastard!” were the words most commonly heard from unsuspecting victims.  So many stories. I regularly took him flying with me, enticing him into my flying helmet for a jolly to wherever in Belize, Germany, Denmark, England and Northern Ireland.  He and I became legends that are still remembered, forty years on. HTB eventually received a ceremonial burial in Northern Ireland after he died of old age.  It was a sad day, but I always promised him that I would write the stories up that we shared together. 

Back to Jim though.

The protocol of now providing live tarantulas without notice took me by surprise.  It only happened once before I called the whole operation off.  HTB was safely ensconced in my bedroom when Mr Spider Supply Man turned up with a cardboard box full of the little devils in tins and plastic containers.  He didn’t know how many and I didn’t know how many. I did know that I didn’t want them.  They were small, ugly little rejects that their mothers probably wanted out of the nest anyway. Feisty, quick little things.  Wild, unhappy being trapped in tiny confined space.  

I said NO.  He said “but you have to take dem mista”. 

I still said no, but I looked over them for one decent specimen. I found something vaguely usable.  I said, “that one, five dollars”.  He looked at me disappointingly, took five American dollars and walked out, leaving every single one of the little horrors on my desk. 

The trouble was that by this stage I had grown a conscience.  Unexpectedly co-parenting sixty baby scorpions in my bedroom and taking HTB under my wing had grasped my better nature by the balls and I couldn’t even begin to think about making them into trophies any longer. 

I put all the tins and makeshift boxes into my wastebin and hustled them back quietly into my bedroom.  I needed to give them space.  The only thing I had available was a big deep picture frame meant for a butterfly collection.  The glass front was loose, so I was able to shepherd them in one by one through a gap in the glass, then slide it back over. And so it sat on my bedroom table alongside my toilet bag, blueys, camera and picture making materials. A box with 12 rampant cannibalistic fast little dull brown and grey tarantulas. Scuttling from side to side. 

I didn’t have a clue what to do. But the word quickly got around. I instructed everyone, but everyone to keep away from my bedroom.  It was out of bounds.  With no lock on the door intruders were a constant fear of mine, and with it a fear of them getting out, especially in the vicinity of Jim, who knew they were there, in my bedroom, next to his bedroom. Twelve of his most terrifying and hated things in life. 

Temporarily imprisoned. 

Only temporarily because on the fateful night in question I had been downtown in Belize City until late, enjoying the dancing, the upbeat music and the crazy lives of the locals.  I got back to my bedroom to discover that I had indeed had unwelcome visitors.  To my horror the glass had been moved and most of my new collection had escaped.  Only three were left. I was Aghast. Terrified. Panicked. I could hear Jim snoring next door. And I wasn’t yet aware of the size of the spider gap under each door.

I spent until 4am turning my bedroom upside down and inside out looking for the little blighters. Bearing in mind that a tarantula is a pretty agile creature, when being young and being given chase, eight legs is a pretty good strategy for moving quickly. Finding one is one thing, catching is another thing. Look, see one, give chase, in, out, around a chest of drawers, back, under, in a draw, pull it out, in another draw, clothes out, round the side escaped again. It goes on for hours.  Up the wall, pull the bed out, turn it over, across the wall, behind the wardobe, pull it out, down the wall again, across the floor, under the bed, along the wall, back to the bloody chest of drawers and pile of clothes. OH f**k there is another one, got two of them on the go now, Christ and another one, bugger one on the ceiling, across to the corner, across the wall, zigzag down the wall, across to the door out underneath the door.  F**K the door. Can’t even get it open, my kit is in the way. Escapee!! How did it get out there.  I lie on the floor by the door, pretending I’m a spider and my heart sinks. I can see straight into Jim’s bedroom. And I have no idea how many are still in my wrecked bedroom, how many have escape down the corridor and how many have made the species jump into Jim’s prior haven of safety. 

I spent the whole night searching my bedroom and never caught a single one. I saw many in my travels though.  I estimated I had seen at least five different ones darting around in the semi darkness. I was exhausted by the time I knew for sure that I had to take responsibility into my own hands and make the inevitable journey into Jim’s bedroom, while he slept. 

Sitting in the corridor I listened to his heavy breathing, small black pilots right angled torch in hand. It was hard to distinguish from my own heavy breathing. But I could hear gentle snoring.  I was getting the cascade of his breath. Knowing I could only make moves when the sound was the loudest. Over a series of snores, I turned the handle and opened the door, always ready to make an escape.  It squeaked. No surprise. 

Everything squeaked.  The handle. The door. The hinges.   Every floorboard.  Even his bed. 

I crawled across the floor. Torch on with a little click when the snore came, torch off with a little click when it went quiet. Looking around at floor level for anything spider like. Most terrifyingly, I wanted to check his face, neck, head and his pillow area just in case the worst of the worst happened, and he woke up being stared down by the hundred eyes of one of MY Tarantulas.

I moved around the floor checking.  Nothing. All clear.  Of course, if there was one or two loose, they would be well hidden away by now and I would have to turn Jim’s bedroom inside out, just like mine to have any hope of seeing them.  The game would be given away when a wardrobe fell on top of him, or a spider ran across his chest. I just hoped the gods were smiling on me that night. 

After checking his kit and under his furniture, I slowly crawled my way in the dark across to his bed, sliding across the floor, always listening to his breathing. I had already found out that underneath a bed is quite a complex area to search, as there is a lot to it. Corners, crevices, springs, legs, headboard. Nothing to be seen there, no little scurrying creatures. I prayed for Jim to stay asleep whilst I rummaged around his bedclothes. Jim’s head was only a few feet away now and this was closer to him than I had ever been before. His head was turned away from me though, “sharp haircut” I thought, “muscly neck”. “Hmm scary”.

Shielding my torch so only a tiny light got out, I inspected what I could of his bedsheet. He was naked apart from a pair of blue boxers, all his back exposed.  He was fit, I winced.  He would indeed make mincemeat of me if anything went wrong. By the time I got to his pillow I was breathing much heavier than he was. Kneeling on the floor beside his bed and bending over him wasn’t easy. I put my hand on the headboard to steady myself and the whole effing bed moved with me. Jim, bedclothes and all. 

Jim woke. I dropped to the ground beside his bed, laying as flat as possible, half under the bed. Trying hard not to breath.  I was holding onto the bedsprings trying to get further under the bed. Blessed darkness meant he couldn’t see me, but how he couldn’t hear me I never knew. He shuffled around for a while, turned over and went back to sleep.  I waited for ages, half underneath his bed, holding onto the springs, calming my breathing, before sliding on my back towards the door and back into my bedroom. 

He never knew how close he came.  He never knew how close I came. He never found out a thing. 

I never told anyone that nine spiders were missing in the block, ever.  The sixty scorpions lost under the billet a month before were bad enough and this would just pile on the agony. 

I got back into my bedroom and spent the rest of the early morning trying to recreate a bedroom from a nuclear holocaust. Occasionally a spider zipped across my line of sight, but I had given up hope by then.  At least it wasn’t across the corridor in “JimZone”

Thereafter, I just went about my business. Kept HTB, released the remainder into the wild, never did any more framing, never saw Mr Spider Man again and eventually learned to smirk each time I passed Jim, having got past a suitable buffer zone of time in which I could claim innocence if he ever had a heart attack whilst asleep.  

HTB was of course, a joyful physical and natural embodiment of my sentient nature, the introverted and extrovert personalities that existed in me;  generally quiet, dormant and poised, but when the action came on and the chase took hold it would be fast, furious and lead to who knows what. 

The sixty scorpions?  That’s another story …