my lot in life

Last night, when we finally made it home safely from Darcy and Lianna’s, I collapsed on the couch and demanded a foot massage from Jon. I deserved it, after what I’d been through. He obliged (though he made me put socks on first).

I spent the day at their house because Jon was pulling another all-day study session in preparation for his upcoming exams. He came to retrieve me around 10, and we gathered our things to leave. Jon walked out the house before me, jarring awake the ENORMOUS spider sleeping on the outside of the door. I was the first to see it and screamed all sorts of incoherent sentence fragments to draw everyone’s attention to it. It was huge, and a species we’ve previously observed to be lightning fast. So Darcy grabbed a flip flop and positioned himself on the porch for a successful murder. But the spider suspected something and leapt – LEAPT – directly at Jon. It barely missed him and went scuttling into the night, but Jon didn’t know that – he thought it was ON him. So he’s hollering and jumping and spinning in circles until Darcy assured him that he saw it disappear down the stairs.

But that wasn’t nearly the scariest thing that happened last night. After the boys searched the porch steps and surrounding area and promised me the spider was long gone, Jon and I attempted to leave their house again. Because of the pandemonium, we forgot to bring Darcy’s giant LED flashlight that we always use for our trek home – instead we had two smallish ones that barely illuminate what’s directly in front of you. We also forgot to bring our laptop bag, which probably was a good thing because it might have slowed us down when we were RUNNING FOR OUR LIVES five minutes later.

Because this is another bull story. By the time our flashlights caused their eyes to gleam, we were only yards away. There were two of them – one brown, one black. We froze.

They turned to face us.
Jon put his arm across me.
The black one lowered his head.
We began walking backwards.

He charged.

The last thing I saw before turning to run were his eyes getting closer and closer. There was nowhere to go on the narrow, overgrown road but forward into the pitch black. Jon was shouting for me to give him the bag I was carrying. I didn’t…I was too busy STAYING ALIVE.

And then… [deep breath] it was over. I had a partial meltdown once we knew for sure he wasn’t chasing us anymore, and then we turned to go back to Darcy and Lianna’s to call a cab. But, silly us! This is Statia! Cab drivers don’t answer their phones! We called all six numbers to no avail (just like the last time we needed a cab). And there’s only one way home from their house, so we were stuck there unless/until the bulls made their way to an intersection and went another way. So Jon, Darcy, and Lianna, armed with the Maglite, their landlady’s dog, and a broom, went out to wrangle bulls while I stayed inside, tried to control my breathing, and updated my Facebook status. Fifteen minutes later they returned victorious – the coast was clear for our walk home. 

This was at least our third negative encounter with this same black bull (see here and here) and possibly our fourth (see here). And don't forget about this encounter with the brown one.

On our way home we ran into some neighbors and informed them of our saga. The man told us that a few years back, a black bull was causing trouble and worrying the general public. It finally got to the point that the police decided to do away with it. They lassoed him and shot at point blank range, MISSED, and he made off with nothing more than a broken-off horn. Now the locals all fear a one-horned black bull.

BUT HORNS GROW BACK. So maybe it’s the same one? We’ll just say it is. Sounds better that way. The same man also reminded us that you’re not supposed to run from a charging bull (I’d like to see what he’d have done in our position, with nowhere to dodge and almost zero visibility), and asked specifically what it looked like. I told him, “It was black and it had very shiny eyes."