Bugs On Your Face, two ways

Today was my host mom's 75th birthday party in Tagbilaran. Kate was nice enough to agree to come with me, and after a late breakfast we made our way to City East, where we were discovered by two nieces and led to the correct house. Everyone had already eaten lunch, but we were ushered to a still set table and encouraged to load up on cold pancit, lumpia, lechon manok, and birthday cake. As we sat there next to each other, and trying to look like we were eating more than we really were, we started talking about Kate's new apartment.

"Margie was pulling her pants down, about to pee in the bathroom, and I kept saying 'No Margie there's no water!'" Kate is saying.

"Why is there no water?" I ask, and as Kate starts to respond, I look up from my plate and turn toward her.

"Well they turned it off because...gguuughh!" The sentence drops incomplete out of her mouth and she lefts forth a primitive sound, her face falling into a look of disgust. My eyes barely have time to widen as she swiftly reaches up and knocks something off my cheek. A large, cream colored spider falls softly onto my stomach.

"That was on your face!" she cries in alarm. I look down, jerk my arms back, and say "Flick it farther!" She flicks, and it sails onto the equally cream colored tile of the floor. It's not a small

spider, about the size of a nickel. I squirm in my chair, suddenly itching all over, and brush at

imaginary spider webs on my face.

I hadn't even felt it. I eye the beast warily from my seat and when it starts - very deliberately I think - crawling back up the leg of my chair we retreat to the living room.

This is the best photo I could commit to. It looked like it might be a jumper.

Though I want to think of having a jungle spider on my face while sitting down for birthday lunch as an isolated incident, my mind instantly goes back to an evening the week before, when I was getting ready for bed. I was starting my nightly grooming routine up in my bedroom - something I do to minimize the amount of time I spend in the somewhat less than sanitary bathroom - and had just popped my toothbrush into my mouth and was putting on a headband when I felt something like webs on my face. What the... My first thought was that a spider had taken up residence on my headband and I had just stretched its house across my forehead. But reaching up to brush it away I found several tiny ants instead. Then I noticed them all over my hand and forearm. "Oh no" I slur aloud, a mouth full of toothpaste. I yanked my toothbrush out of my mouth and looked at it in horror, then ran to my trash bag and started spitting frantically into it. There were ants ground into the bristles and smashed onto the plastic.

Lila's ants, it seemed, had finally acknowledged the overwhelming appeal of a nice toothpastey toothbrush, and in feeding frenzy that should have spurred someone to contact the Poison Control Center, were stuffing themselves with Aquafresh.

That I had failed to notice them even as I put the toothpaste on my brush can only be a testament to the awesome power of daydreams about grilled cheese sandwiches, vanilla soy lattes, hot showers, and HBO.

Six months here, and I still don't have a taste for ants. They show up almost daily in my meals, either roving through the rice or in suicidal flotillas on the surface of ramen, and though I know consumption is inevitable and have occasionally just turned a blind eye, I still find the notion of ants in my mouth...icky. Now I was sure I'd be flossing them out for days.

So last week the ants and today the spider. I might still be striving to achieve acceptance from my Filipino neighbors and coworkers, but it seems the Philippine bugs just love me.