Tarantulas' Unver a Gibbous Moon (a chapter story

The Green Sea of the Amazon (from the short story)



March/Summer of 2000 AD, in South America, the Peruvian Amazon, 125-miles from Iquitos (one of several chapters from the story of “The Green Seas of the Amazon”)

Tarantulas’ Under a Gibbous Moon


We were out and under the light of a gibbous moon, a romantic scene indeed, if you can eliminate the mosquitoes, and a few other items, the: the ants, and spiders, and snakes, and so forth, and few big cats dashing through the far-off distance between trees like a flash; nonetheless, the light was as if there were a hale around it, a radiation emanating from it.
The lodge was a good distance from us, now with our guide, in the thick of the jungle, the Amazon. This time there was no path to guide us, not like when we went to the Canopy, or the jungle village, but Avelino assured me he didn’t need one, it was his ‘backyard,’ so he said, matter-of-fact, he said that too many times, it made me suspicious, so I brought my flash light with, plan B, in case he lost his night vision.
Now we were in the dense jungle, a flashlight in his hands, and mine likewise, I guess he was no fool, he was bragging, trying to impress, I liked the guy, but I didn’t like the chances he took with his ego, at my expense. I was born and raised in St. Paul, Minnesota, and even I at night, walked where there were arc lights, the moon was for the animals, not humans, that’s why God gave us electricity, we don’t have the eyes for the night, not modern man anyhow or city slickers.
The moon over our heads we could hardly see anyway, not now, the thick of the jungle was camouflage it—masking it, it peeked its beams through a few spaces of the leafage, but that was all, not even enough to see your hands if you wanted to wash them. Thus, looking for—none other than the big spiders was our mission this evening, the Tarantulas; my wife was with me, and I mean with me, almost on my back, almost had to piggyback her to and from wherever our jungle leader, Gunga Din or Tarzan, was take u s.
We were lucky in that we got our own personal guide and the other group three or four couples to group got one guide for them all. It was, as I wanted it to be, but not always did things turn out the way you wanted them to, on such excursions. We had gone Purina fishing the day before, I ate three perinea that evening, it was delicious, but bony.

As we walked into a deeper part of the rainforest, we past many large trees, larger and thicker than the thickest pillars of any cathedral I had yet seen (except one), and I’ve been in many cathedrals around the world: from Istanbul to Rome, and throughout South, Central, and North America— (and the biggest pillars I’ve yet to discover I found in an underground cathedral, in Colombia, outside of Bogotá called: La Catedral de Sal; 83-feet round; second place St. Paul, Minnesota, Cathedral, 42-feet, perhaps the Catedral de Sal had a larger circumference than the tree, if so it was the only pillars that could match these trees I saw; all along our sides was entangled shrubbery, a wealth of green—immense and at times burdensome. Rosa, my wife, walked shoulder to shoulder by me, if not a foot behind, and as far as I knew Avelino was walking every which way, it seems he knew and didn’t know his backyard as well as he said. But somehow we got him to slow down a bit, lest we get lost, and God help us then.
For me, a few of the stops we made, I got to rest when needed, plus we had stopped earlier in the day at Aveliono’s home village, perhaps—two-hundred natives to the area, several houses on sticks, or I should say, wooded four-by-fours; and a large school house, a square box type building, with a tin roof, and thin wooded sides for walls, not much but it served it purpose—
it now came to mind—as we walked through this thick foliage of a jungle at night—the story he told us, that being: his village was alongside the river, “We got to keep a good eye out on the children, they run off, and get into the bulky high grass, and the big cats come and pull them by the necks, or the snakes come and swallow them whole, but mothers can’t be everywhere all the time, can they…” so he said, rhetorically, with a look at me, a glace from the side of his left eye, as he turned his head to see if I was listening, as we walked from structure to structure in his village. And then he introduced us to his sister-in-law, as she appeared—seemingly out of nowhere, on the platform, of the school building.

All of a sudden we stopped by a big tree, our guide was checking out holes here and there, now he looked, stared at a thick trunk of a tree, it was perhaps thirty feet round, and its roots extended a half foot out of the ground, and a big hole was under one root—he saws it, the largest root it seemed of the tree, or what I could see of the tree, it was dark and the trunk and roots of the tree filled my eyes, and I dared not take them off what he was looking at.
“It’ll all work out,” he said looking at Rosa, and putting his stick into the hole, thinking perchance, Rosa might freak out or something. Rosa was behind me, I was about four-feet from the hole, and of course our guide was almost on top of it, possibly two-feet, with his stick inside of it, moving it about, disrupting—if indeed there was a family meeting going on down deep in it.
Then I saw, and I’m sure Rosa saw, long hairy, red creepy legs coming out of the hole: extending out inch by inch … all will be ok,” he said, not sure if he was talking to us or the creature inside the hole with the rustic legs halfway out; the legs turned out to be bushy like, more reddish-brown, huge spider legs, no, Tarantula legs: larger than my whole hand, legs longer than my fingers, as thick as my fingers, beady eyes. Rosa moved just a tinge,
“Where’d he come from,” she said.
“It’s his home,” said Avelino, “I woke him up, just for you.”
Rosa stood still, stone still by my side, almost on top of my shoulder and back, the creature seemed to have arched himself, lowered his back, as if to jump, and I was amazed, as the eyes of the creature kept staring at me, or so it seemed, and Avelino waved his long magic wand (or stick) around its legs, as if it tranquilized the creature, kept him from jumping, moving too fast. Now the creature stood still, as if guarding its hole, its abode, and we watched Gunga Din do his thing, around them legs, then he took the stick away; I had my flash light on the creature all the time. Then another long legged thick legged tarantula came out, perhaps the mate, as if to either protect its mate, or join in on the festivities. But the second one never came out all the way, like the first one did; it kept its guard, and remained halfway in the hole. And he was leaning over to get a better view of what he was doing, and I was leaning over with the flash light, and Rosa was leaning over on me, and the gibbous moon could be seen slightly through a porthole it would seem, the green sea tops of the trees.
“Be calm Rosa,” I said, I could hear her heart beating, and her breathing was heavy. She had my wife and sidekick only one month, he had gotten married in February of 2000, an it was now March, and I was finding out she was quite brave, even if she was scared, it did not make her run or hide or cry or anything, just extra couscous.
at this point, for less than a year, we had been married but been my she wanted to be part of everything, and she was. For such a small or short woman, she had the guts of a charging elephant, so I was learning
So here we were with two monstrous huge spiders, with beady eyes staring at us, and I guess it was to me, the funniest thing to see this stick tranquilize them to the point of curbing out the danger, to where there seemed not to be any. Fine, it had at that point been a full day, and therefore—after this escapade—we went back to the lodge and had a good night’s sleep, but first we ate our fish.