Coward in Just in Case

I was piling everything in the car yesterday before heading to my parents'. At the last minute I grabbed my cd cases down from the top of the bookshelf, where they've sat for a while. I was flipping through them without a concern in the world when this giant freaking spider strolled out and said hi. (Or scurried out and hid under a fold in the blanket, because of course this was on my bed.)
I'm generally pretty lenient with spiders and usually only go after them they meet 1 (or more) of the following: 1. Are poisonous. 2. Are hairy (think tarantulas) 3. Scare me (appearing as if out of nowhere, running at me, etc) So, back to my story. The giant spider is mocking me. I grab a sandal and whack him. (Yes, I'm aware it's hard to kill a spider on a bed. But, If I had knocked him off the bed to the floor, i would have lost him and then I would have had to have moved out.) He looked dead so I told myself I needed to get him off the bed. I had a large piece of cardboard from my new sheets. I laid it on the bed in front of him and prepared to rake him onto it. Then he moved. I proceeded to beat the hell out of him with my sandal while making noises that only dogs can hear. He was good and dead. I walked away and left. My dad had a million questions about it, so we went online to look for spiders that looked similar in build and of course, in Louisiana, if you search for brown spiders it takes you to brown recluse and I was convinced I had killed a brown recluse on my bed and left it there. It was late when I got home, but I went in to check him out. At first I didn't see him and thought he had come alive. Then I saw him further up than I had remembered (but very very dead). I had the light on but got out a flashlight to get a better look. I didn't see a violin, but I wasn't sure, so I left him. (There was NO WAY I was sleeping in that bed anyway. Yes, I realize that makes me a chicken. I'm ok with that.) I waited until it was light, got in there again and got very close looking for a violin. (If that thing had moved, or if something had touched me, or anything like that, and I would died right there on the spot. ) I put a quarter by it for size and sent a picture to a couple of biologist friends. Both instantly replied that it was too big, too dark, and no violin - not a brown recluse. So that' a relief, but of course now there's the thought that there was more than ond spider and I didn't see the others as they hid in my bed. (Of course the paranoia is fueled by hours of reading about brown recluse spiders, looking at pictures, etc. )

On a different note, this was part of Daddy's gift Sunday. It says, "Cage goes in the water....you go in the water....shark is in the water.....our shark". I got it was a joke for him, it's one of his favorite scenes from Jaws and I was excited to find it. He and my mom are out of town fora few days and she told me he wore it today. lol