Dog and Tarantula Drive Couple to Drink

Thursday, June 21, 2001 - UK

LONDON — As you read this, a terrified English couple may still be hanging out at a pub in Windsor, because they're too afraid to go back home.

They breakfast at a café, eat dinner at a tavern and sleep with the lights on these days.  What could possibly have caused these people to flee their home in horror so suddenly?

Answer: a spider and (to a much lesser degree) their dog.  Here's how it happened:

Scene i: Pauline and the Spider

Last week, 37-year-old Pauline Bailey bought some bananas.  Once back in her kitchen, she saw an enormous tarantula crawl out of the bunch and scurry behind the stove where it took up residence and refused to come out.

Scene ii: Enter Gary

Both Pauline and her husband Gary, 40, were mortified.  But refusing to be bested by a bug, Mr. Bailey got down on the floor to hunt for the renegade octopod.  Cue the Jaws music.

Scene iii: Enter the Dog

(And here comes the Three Stooges part.)  Whether by conscious and premeditated design, or simply by dint of being a goofy dog, the house pooch chose that precise moment to sneak up on Mr. Bailey and poke him in the head.  The results were all but catastrophic.  As the man recounts, "I was on my knees looking under the cupboards when my dog nuzzled my ear. I nearly jumped out of my skin—I thought it was the spider."

Apparently that was the last straw.  The couple cordoned off the area and declared the kitchen a no-go zone, and they have since been spending a lot more time getting to know the neighborhood pubs, reports the UK's Sun newspaper.

As for the spider and the dog, who knows how they're dealing with it—the posh London pad all to themselves?  But the phrase Animal House does come to mind...

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