My skin's still crawling after reading this story in the BBC Magazine. It dates from the late 19th century.
In hindsight, there were better places to hunker down for a kip. But James Payn wasn't to know that as he clambered into the goods van of a waiting freight train. He was just thankful he'd found somewhere to rest.
What's more, it seemed like he'd hit the hobo equivalent of the jackpot - the carriage was loaded with bananas. James cheerfully helped himself to a few, then drifted off to a contented sleep.
But Payn, a Liverpudlian who had been riding the railroads of America, had Goldilocks' luck when it came to stumbling upon free board and lodging. When he woke, it was to a sensation plucked straight from an arachnophobe's nightmare.
The carriage was dark. The door was sealed. The train was rattling along the track - and something had just crawled over his face. Something large. Something hairy. Something leggy.
With quivering fingers, James struck a match. There was the door. There was the fruit. And there, dotted all around, were a multitude of tarantulas.
As he looked up, one tumbled down on to his head. The moment he'd regained consciousness, James dashed to the door, but couldn't force it open. Another strike of a match revealed yet more spiders, all creeping from their hiding spots in the bunches of bananas.
For hour upon horrible hour, Payn stood pinned by fear to the carriage door, too terrified to move, even as the tarantulas scurried over him.
Eventually, inevitably, he fainted again. This time, when he came to, he found himself in a hospital bed in Portland, Oregon, with an angry mark on his head where he had been bitten.
It wasn't the only lasting damage from his ordeal. "It seems that when the car was opened upon reaching its destination, Payn was found in it, mad," said the Hull Daily Mail in January 1897.
I'd probably have used the match to set fire to the damn wagon, even if I was inside. Great big hairy spiders crawling on me . . . ewwww!
Peter
No sale. Bananas need refrigeration. Tropical insects don't deal well with cold temperatures.
ReplyDeleteGood story, though.
...besides, all he really had to do was start stomping on them. Tarantulas are big, but they're not bigger than a well placed shoe.
ReplyDeleteI knew a guy who worked for a grocery store. Said they got a delivery of bananas and they were always super cold. As they were carrying them in, what looked like a grey tennis ball fell out of one of the bunches and rolled a few feet. As it warmed a bit it slowly unfurled into a tarantula and began to walk. I think of that every time I see bananas in a store.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, after running my Duc along Mines Rd, outside of Livermore, I decided to go home via the Licks Observatory road, that crosses to the bay. Cruising along, I came around a corner to encounter a bunch of tarantulas crossing the road. I stopped to look. They move rather slowly when in traveling mode. Big suckers, too. Very colorful against a blacktop road.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised that CA doesn't install yellow diamond warning signs "spider crossing ahead". They warn about everything else in this "progressive slice of heaven".