Big Spider!

It was at the end of dinner time and about five or six girls were on the veranda talking (including myself). Our 'student leader' was opening a glass-bottled coca-cola, and it sprayed all over her and the table. We all were laughing over than when we heard people shreaking inside. "What is going on?" was the question repeated quite often, so we all went rushing over into the hallway that lead to the bedrooms, as did the people who were after-dinner-lounging in the big living room. A couple girls were at the end of the hall, where there is a door (with a few cracks in it) and they were jumping back and looking down.

"What is it?"

"It went under there, you can't really see it."

"It's a HUGE spider!"

"Ahhhh!!" The two girls in the hall jumped back as the spider peaked back out at them. The spider was altogether about the size of the palm (yes, PALM) of your hand. Our student leader wanted us to wait for our Professor to see if she could identify what kind of spider it was. By this time everyone was in the little hallway peaking over each other's shoulders and the top of heads to view the creepy crawler. The spider was huddled in the corner, and then scurried to the outer part of the door into another corner where it had no options but to sit and try to hide. There was a lot of laughter, shreaking, and "Oh my word!" 's as the spider tried to hide from all the noise. Our Zambian cook, who had been doing the dinner dishes, came to see what the ruckus was about. He was smiling at hearing our ruckus and looked down to see the little spider. He had a stick-like handle in his hand of some sort and poked at it, which produced more "Ewww!" and "Ahh!" 's and jumping back to avoid the spider. He lau

ghed, and said, "That is nothing," meaning that is nothing to worry about and was about to leave when one of the girls stated, "No, don't just laugh and leave! You have to do something about it!" But, he did leave, I think to get something to kill it with. By this time, as we all were still accumulated in the hall... like a clot in a blood vessel... the spider decided that he wanted to try and jump on our student leader to try and get away. The door was open, so he was making his move, jumping about and trying to get away. Some of the girls screached and backed away, but for some reason I decided that I should go in and try to end that little critter! So, I quickly took of my sandal that I was wearing, crouched down in one fluid motion and swapped that big spider, which stunned it, and then another time to kill it. I think the cook came back while I was busy trying to kill the spider, so he took another long stick-like handle and swept it outside the door. Let's just say that we were all glad that the spider was dead and wouldn't be on one of our pillows the following morning :).

We still don't know what it is. One of the girls thought it might have been a Wolf Spider. I don't know what kind of spider the picture shows, but that's what it kindof looked like (again, this one is off the internet, not from anyone here; where's the camera in the intense moment??). And, it does look like the spider could have been as big as the one in the picture. It did look like the wolf spider, except the end part of the spider (abdomen?) was more pointed at the top and less rounded. But, it had the same shape with the legs and the overall body structure.

I wander what we will have next.