Somehow all the dogs got loose in the garage and then the door opened for a car and suddenly there were even more dogs, puppies, big dogs, the dogs I was originally trying to corral, and what at first I thought was the smallest puppy I had ever seen but eventually I saw was a teeny little fox kit, smaller than they really can be, the size of a mouse. I went for it to keep it out of the barking mayhem, people being upended and dogs joyfully bouncing off each other. It crawled hesitantly into my hand and cuddled up, softly yipping.

Confounded I tried to determine what to do and decided I should put it in a kennel and ask a vet. I started to head back into the house to do so but the kit didn’t want me to and started nipping my hand and wriggling. That was when I noticed that the kit had eight unusually heavy whiskers, four to each side of its’ nose, and that they appeared to be furred and articulated, pushing against my hand and moving independently.

As I processed this, realising that this was no fox kit, the animal exploded into a shower of hundreds of heavily furred stoplight red spiders, each about half a centimeter across. The baby spiders were extremely fast and spread out through the garage and over the cars and people and dogs and into the house provoking shouts and tarantellas of dismay.

I awakened myself frantically brushing them away.

(We watched an episode of GDT’s Cabinet of Curiosities last night and this is certainly about that.)