Green

Doing our bit to fight climate change this week led to a trip to hospital.

And questions about my sanity.

Mindful of the upcoming Copenhagen summit, we decided to plant a veggie garden.

It’s something we try in spring each year, usually resulting in an emaciated crop of cherry tomatoes and thumb-sized nubs of carrot, gobbled with gusto by our kids who don’t know any better.

I was determined that – this year – it would be different.

Striding into the backyard, armed with a shovel and two buckets of worm poo, I tripped over the sandpit and spilled the brown slop onto my new running shoes.

(Actually, I don’t know why I buy running shoes since I don’t plan on doing any – well – running. Unless someone is chasing me, of course.)

Now barefoot, I felt ‘at one’ with the earth as I composted, planted and mulched like Mother Nature herself.

Until I looked down to see a nasty red lump, the size of a lychee, between my toes.

Figuring that it was a corn or bunion, I hobbled inside like an 80-year-old to bathe the offending growth in poultices of apple cider vinegar, lemon peel and sodden tea bags.

All notions of Mother Earth went out the window at 2-17am, when I awoke in excruciating pain.

I popped more painkillers than Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger, put together.

The next morning at the hospital emergency ward, a doctor confirmed that my corn was, in fact, a spider bite.

Now, I’ve worked in television for twenty years.

I knew a little venom wouldn’t kill me.

But it hurt like hell.

And I became intent on revenge.

Limping towards the compost bin, armed with my son’s Bug Catcher, I tore off the lid to reveal dozens, nay, hundreds of angry arachnids, staring at me with their beady little eyes.

(OK – I was on a fair few drugs by this stage, so this may have been a hallucination.)

Hubby came home to find a demented wife, giggling maniacally after suffocating ten of her spidery nemeses.

I was like a scene from “When Buddhists Go Bad”.

Instead of teaching the children to respect all creatures of the earth, I began to encourage mass murder.

“If you see a spider, even a Daddy Long-legs, don’t go near it. Just tell mummy and I WILL KILL IT! AND STOMP ON IT! AND WIPE IT OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH!” (Cue Dr. Evil laugh.)

I’ve given up being a suburban eco-warrior.

Sure, I still look forward to that first burst of cherry tomatoes.

But I think I’ll wear shoes the next time I go near the Red Backs which have hijacked our compost bin.

It ain’t easy being green.