The Irony of Fate (or, Enjoy your Tarantula)

For those of you who know me as a bit (or a bit more than a bit) of an arachnaphobe, you'll probably have a few laughs at my expense.

And for those of you who don't know me, let me introduce myself. Hi, my name is Claire and I'm terrified of spiders.

I won't get into the details of how this all started other than to say it involved a big spider climbing on my body, and that even writing these words still gives me the heebie-jeebies.

So yesterday, after boarding the train back to Ljubljana from Budapest--I noticed a guy walk by carrying a big ice-chest, the kind I'd pack to take to a concert or the beach (a bit out of place in the snow in Budapest at the train station). And low and behold, he came and sat in my compartment.  After checking to see that the radiator was warm, he opened up his ice chest and pulled out a chameleon. I kid you not. a chameleon. it was in a plastic container--but a live chameleon. It was two months old, he later told me.

and then he pulled out not one but five (FIVE!) vials with different spiders in them. Four of them were small enough--about the size of a pill bottle (the vials, not the spiders!)--that I couldn't see anything. But the last--in a jar about the size of a large yogurt container--well he had eight hairy legs and I could see them all. Luckily, the jar was opaqueish (and I didn't have my glasses on--a strategic move), so I couldn't see any of the hairy details. and I just focused on not looking physically uncomfortable. As far as I could tell, my two options were
1.  totally offend this guy and look for another compartment on the train or
2. grit my teeth and deal with it. and who knows, maybe this would be my spider breakthrough.

but sharing a train compartment with tarantula, well, it makes for a hell of a long ride. (Tarantulas on a Train anyone? Travels with Tarantulas?)

and I tried not to stare too much--but I think my terrified glances were interpreted as genuine interest, and he kept holding up the vials, checking on the spiders and offering for me to look at them, and I tried to contain myself. and all I could think about the entire time was "what happens if we get in a train wreck, and I'm somehow pinned somewhere and then the spiders get out? do chameleons eat tarantulas? do tarantulas eat chameleons?)
let's just say--any train trip with tarantulas is a train trip that lasts a little too long.

but I survived unscathed, and that's the important part.