Once I had a job moving a bunch of stuff from from one warehouse to another. A giant (well, pretty giant... big, anyway) Black Widow spider ran from underneath a shelf and headed straight for my foot. When I jumped back, it ran back under the shelf. Well of course, when you see a spider (especially a Black Widow) you don't want to lose track of it. So I watched the bottom of the shelf and scanned the area to see if it would try some tricky flanking maneuver to sneak up on me. But there was no sign of it.

So after a while, I went back to work, occasionally glancing back to the spider zone. Suddenly it shot back out from under the shelf and stopped. So I stopped. As soon as I moved, it zipped back to its hiding place. Now most of the time, I guess I'm a "don't bother the bugs and they won't bother you" type of person, or sometimes even a "coax the spider onto a piece of paper and take it outside so it can continue a happy existence" type of guy. But now this Black Widow was staking a claim to the shelf area with murder in its eight eyes. And I naturally assumed its wicked bite would be instant death.

So I found a two-by-four for a weapon and waited for the Black Widow to strike again. Sure enough, soon it leaped out from under the shelf and dared me to do something about it. So I whacked with the two-by-four. After the dust cleared, there was no sign of the spider. I waited some more. Zip, it came back. I smashed at it again. Again it escaped.

So this went on and on... The spider laughing and running. Me whacking and missing.

After a while, I finally had enough. As I put down the two-by-four, the spider came out from its hiding place. I conceded the shelf area territory to the Black Widow and went to lunch.