Dry Rot, Scorpions, Tarantulas, Oh My!

Today I met a tarantula.

We've all seen them before. On tv. Or inside thick glass boxes. They're creepy looking, what with the hairy factor and all, but harmless, and we intuitively know this. This innate knowledge, however, changes when one is suddenly six inches from your foot.

I was on my way back from meditating in the field of a nearby farm. He was moseying home from a hard day at the plant, crossing the road from wilderness back to village life. He stopped. I stopped. We looked at each other with a mix of fascination and revulsion. (I imagine that I am just as hideous and terrifying to him as he, with his quarter inch thick legs and enormous mildewy-green body, is to me). I briefly contemplated getting out my camera with my fantastically trembling hands, but decided that perhaps part of this journey's lesson for me is to stop making idiotic decisions at the eleventh hour. With the luck I've been having lately, he would have been a rare breed of poisonous jumping tarantula, and stopping for any period of time longer than what it takes to figure out how to pass while giving him the widest berth possible, would have resulted in instant death. Or perhaps simply some unforeseen destruction of my last pair of pants.

Its this same sense of responsibility that prevented me from really exploring the old castle that stands at the top of the hill, shadowing the village of Bugnara. It is wonderfully creepy and dilapidated, covered in overgrowth and crumbling at the foundations. There are enticingly eerie, seemingly bottomless caverns where I found myself hovering at the entrance. Spiral stairwells are interrupted by places where the roof has caved in. I started to walk across a second story archway that led to the overgrown garden, but then noticed all the decay and thought the better of adding my 140 lbs of dead weight to the mix. In some of the empty chambers there were clothes, newspapers, and remnants of wine bottles, unsettling reminders that I might meet someone or something I wasn't prepared for. So, I took a bunch of exterior pictures and wandered through the main courtyard where there was no roof to potentially fall on my head. An explosion of blackberry bushes tempted me, so I popped a few in my mouth. They did not however, taste like the blackberries I am accustomed to (or delicious in any way for that matter) so I decided that maybe, like exploring the abandoned castle, I wasn't meant to be eating them, and promptly spit them out. Upon returning to the house and telling Sue and Ross of my wanderings, they decided to inform me that the one "pest" you really have to watch out for in Italy are scorpions. And that they tend to like wild areas (like creepy overgrown castles) more than populated ones. Hmmm...could I perhaps be getting wiser? Could sacrificing my adventurous spirit in favor of a longer life be a sign that I am evolving? Hooray for progress!

I wonder then, what it means that today when I passed by the castle again, I stopped and thought long and hard about whether I could get over the wire fence covering the entrance to the back (quite sturdy looking) stairwell and whether bringing a flashlight might be all I need to protect me from anything creepy and crawly catching me by surprise...