Here’s a fact that I know about tarantulas even without Robert telling me. They are fast. Let me repeat that word. Faaassssstttttt!
Before I had slid the top half an inch, Rosa was up and over the side and on the counter, barreling toward the man with the sloppy meatball sandwich. When he got a look at her running toward him, he jumped off his stool backward and backed up so fast, he sat down in the lady’s lap sitting at the table behind him.
“Oh my word!” screamed the lady. “I don’t believe we’ve even met!”
Rosa didn’t stop at the meatball sandwich. Oh, no. She was up and over it like it was a small hill. As she scurried down the lime green counter, she left red tomato sauce tracks where her eight legs were running toward a really pretty teenage girl who was eating a bowl of minestrone soup. Barreling along the countertop, it looked like Rosa was leaving colored footprints in wet cement. And then suddenly, she was gone, disappeared into the bowl of soup.
“Eeuuuwwwwww!” the girl screamed. “Gross! There’s a hairy thing splashing around in my soup!”
Harvey’s head spun around just in time to see Rosa swimming the breaststroke across the bowl of minestrone.
“Hey, kid,” he yelled to me. “You promised to keep that thing under control!”
That snapped me into action. I got up and dashed over to the stool where the girl had been sitting. I stuck my hand into the soup, grabbing for Rosa. But as I’ve already pointed out, tarantulas are fast. All I came up with was a fistful of zucchini and some soggy cabbage.
“Rosa!” I yelled. “Get back here this instant. This is completely unacceptable behavior.”
She was in no mood to listen to instructions. She stood just out of my reach on the counter, pulsating, pumping up and down on her eight legs like she was on a bouncing trampoline.
“I need your cooperation now!” I said. “Remember what we said about using our restaurant manners.”
I extended my hand toward her. Slowly. Slowly. Just as I went for the grab, she took off the other way, running all the way to the other end of the counter where Harvey keeps his coconut cake under a glass domed dish. Everybody from that end of the restaurant was on their feet now, and they weren’t happy.
“A spider!” yelled a woman in a green knit cap.
“I’m allergic to bugs!” called a man in a bow tie. “They give me a rash on my elbows!”
“Mamma mia!” cried an Italian woman with a small mustache. “It’s going to bite us, one by one.”
“Hank, please!” yelled Harvey. “Capture that thing.”
“I’m trying, Harvey! I really am! But babies have a mind of their own.”
Rosa looked over at Harvey and moved in closer, close enough for him to try to bonk her with his wooden spoon. She reached her hind leg up to her tummy, and flicked a few choice tarantula hairs in his direction.
“Eeeuuuwww!” the teenage girl called. “The beast is flicking hair all over the place. Gross!”
That made Harvey jump back, landing on his butt on the sandwich counter. His butt hit a bull’s-eye on the squeeze bottle of yellow mustard, which squirted all over his rear end. You can only imagine what it looked like all over the back of his pants. Let me just say, it didn’t look like mustard.
Everyone took off to the back of the restaurant and stood huddled in a corner, smooshed into a ball of people. Rosa must have seen them and thought to herself, Hey, this is fun. She made another dash down the counter toward them, and just before she got to the very end, she jumped onto the last stool in front of them. They ran screaming with their hands in the air, into the opposite corner by the window. The man in the bow tie, who had dropped his pizza slice, stepped on it and went sliding on the cheese along the linoleum floor. He looked like he was skateboarding.
“Whooaaaa!” he yelled.
“Nice moves, dude,” a skateboarder from one of the other tables called out.
A part of me wanted to step back and enjoy the scene. I mean, let’s face it. It was pretty funny. A guy in a bow tie skateboarding on melted cheese? Come on. You have to laugh. Besides, we all know that Rosa is basically harmless.
But the other part of me, the big brother part, knew that I had to be responsible and handle the situation quickly. That part of me knew that this was not a laughing matter.
And that was the part that cleared my brain and instantly created a plan of attack. I raced down to the end of the counter and took the glass dome top off the coconut cake plate. I crept as quickly and silently as I could behind Rosa and in a swift (and if I say so myself) precise move, captured her under the top. All the customers broke into applause. I didn’t realize until that moment that I had been holding my breath, which I let out in a big sigh.
I gave Rosa a stern look.
“You and I have to talk, young lady,” I said. “You can bet there will be consequences for this.”
Holy moly! Now I wasn’t just sounding like my father, I had turned into him!
I turned to all the customers and tried to smile, like this was no big deal.
“It’s okay, folks,” I said. “The situation is under control, and there is no danger. Please go back to enjoying your meal.”
“What about my soup?” the teenage girl said. “It’s probably got spider pee in it.”
“Rosa and I would like to buy you another bowl,” I said, without hesitating.
I reached into my jeans pocket to see how much money I had. I couldn’t count it very well, so I just laid it all down on the counter, pretending I knew what I was doing with it.
“This should cover it,” Harvey said, taking a dollar and some change. I had no idea how much I had left, but I picked it all up and put it in my pocket with great confidence. You learn to put on a brave face when you can’t do math in your head.
“Now, Hank, since you’re finished with your pizza, I think it’s time to take your spider home,” Harvey said. “And by the way, make sure you leave her there next time you come in for a slice.”
As I was gathering up my things, the front door opened and in came Papa Pete.
“Hey, Hankie,” he said. “I stopped by the apartment and your mom said you were here.”
“Papa Pete, I’ve never been so happy to see you.”
“We had a little excitement here,” Harvey said. “The kid will tell you about it. Right after he escorts the spider out of here…which he will be doing immediately if not sooner.”
I looked at Rosa sitting under the glass cake dome and Papa Pete followed my gaze. There she was, having her own party under there, happy as can be. She had found a shred of coconut and was having a grand old time lapping it up, or whatever spiders do with birthday cake.
“Hank, what’s she doing here?” Papa Pete asked.
“I invited her to my birthday party,” I said. “But she hogged the show, just like a typical baby. That’s what you get for trying to share. The baby takes over.”
“Families share,” Papa Pete said. “That’s what they do. With certain exceptions. And one of them is birthdays. That’s your special day. No sharing required.”
“Tell that to Rosa,” I said.
“I will, as soon as we get her out of Harvey’s cake dish. She seems to have made herself at home with the coconut frosting.”
I went and got Rosa’s plastic tank, tore off another little piece of pizza, and dropped it in. I brought it down to the cake dome and quickly lifted it just enough to slide Rosa’s tank inside. She didn’t attempt to get out this time, because she was busy chowing down on her dessert. But within a few seconds, the pizza smell hit her, and she stopped eating the coconut and made a beeline for the pizza. Who wouldn’t? Harvey’s pizza is the best.
Once she was inside her tank, Papa Pete lifted the cake dome and I slammed on the lid.
“Mission accomplished,” Papa Pete said.
I gathered my party favors and balloon, thanked Harvey for his patience, waved good-bye to all the other customers, and headed out the door.
I had the feeling they were all very happy to see us go.