christmas crabs

a bunch of us were spending the summer in a giant and beautiful house in the country. white post fences, sprawling pastures and lawns and so many bedrooms in the house, sometimes you really had to make an effort to run into someone if it wasn't time to swim or eat. it was bliss. everything was so clean and beautiful that all of us just felt fortunate and happy. about two weeks into our stay, we had finished up all the wine stored in the kitchen, so one afternoon i went on a solo exploration to find the wine cellar. i made my way downstairs into the partial basement ( it opened out onto another sprawling hillside lawn...) and after opening a few doors found it- fully stocked of course. there was straw on the floor which made me smile as i felt it was quite charming. i walked over to pick out a couple of bottles for dinner when i noticed three giant 'straw balls' sort of hanging in one of the corners. the two in back were dark, tight and kind of moist looking, the one in front was dry and loose looking. as i moved closer there seemed to be some kind of reactive movement inside the thing. i pulled backed instantly and watched it from arms length. after a few moments i realized it was a giant nest of baby spiders. there were thousands and thousands that i could make out moving in the straw. the ball began to rock ever so slightly and then tipped forward from it's perch and broke open on the floor. immediately the baby spiders spilled out like a liquid at my feet an began moving toward me. i shrieked, closed the door behind me and ran to get the others (taking the wine of course...). in a few minutes we were all back at the cellar door. the spiders we realized were actually baby christmas crabs and were quite harmless, except now they were oozing under the sill of the closed door like warm honey. at the same moment we remembered the puppies, they all began to teeter out of their whelping box and head for us- walking right into the crabs. we all began to shriek wildly, scooping up puppies and frantically brushing crabs off of them. i ran back into the kitchen and grabbed the orange peel spray. when i got back to the basement, i emptied it on the hoard stopping every last one dead. at first everyone freaked out thinking i had sprayed a pesticide and were worried because the puppies had been exposed. i reassured everyone as i passed the bottle around that it was only concentrated orange oil and was quite harmless to mammals. then we all felt sad about the baby christmas crab genocide but agreed it was the only thing that could have been done. we spent the rest of the afternoon shrieking and carefully removing and relocating the remaining two nest balls to a safe (and distant) forest location. after dinner we all got a little drunk and laughed until we cried.