There was something very creepy going on at the Delaware County Board of Supervisors meeting on Wednesday.
A case of acute arachnophobia seemed to sweep though the crowd of onlookers as a spider described as "huge and fast" darted along the floor of the county office building, dodging feet as it went.
Assemblyman Clifford Crouch was standing, answering questions during a presentation on gas drilling in the Marcellus shale under Delaware County land.
Bob Cairns, the reporter sitting next to me, suddenly muttered, "Wow, look at the size of that spider that just ran past Cliff's foot."
I reacted too late to see the beast, but I could tell from the rustling of people and scraping of chairs behind me that everyone else had spotted it.
County Treasurer Bev Shields said, "It was really big and it went really quick. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye. It was headed for Wayne Reynolds."
Reynolds, public works commissioner, is the county board's go-to man to solve disasters of every kind, but dealing with a behemoth spider was not part of his job description.
Reynolds said Friday that he was hesitant to discuss the spider's demise, fearing that it might bring animal activists running.
"It was a good-sized spider," Reynolds said. "It went underneath Shelley Johnson's chair and hesitated for a few moments and then moved on to the next row behind me.
"It really was huge," Reynolds continued. "I don't know who dispatched it, but I heard a foot go down and someone said That's the end of that.'"
Reynolds speculated about the spider's presence in the boardroom.
"I guess it must of come in on someone's clothes or in someone's briefcase," he said. "And the thought of that is pretty creepy."
One of the board clerks said there has been construction work going on the basement of the building, which might have dislodged the spider from his web, but she added that no other spiders have been spotted.
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People who might be interested in time travel should visit Stewart's Department Store in Delhi.
In many ways, time seems to have stopped in the 125-year-old establishment, where owner and proprietor George Stewart can produce the receipt for the clothing cases that were made in Grand Rapids, Mich., and arrived in Delhi by train in 1913. He still has many of the original ashe clothing hangers that were designed to fit the pull-out clothing bars.
When Stewart begins to reminisce, he takes you back to an earlier time in Delhi's history and almost seems to conduct a guided tour of businesses of yesteryear that used to co-exist with his clothing store.
One thing that has disillusioned Stewart over the years is doing business in New York state. He says the layers of rules, regulations and taxes have taken much of the pleasure out his enterprise.
"If I were to start a business today, it wouldn't be in New York," Stewart said Thursday. "I think I might consider New Hampshire."
When Stewart and his clerks were compiling a list of store highlights, they noted that the RC Allen cash register was installed in the 1940s, and Revillo Signor moved out of the upstairs apartment in 1964 after residing there since 1907. Current clerk Pam Metlicke went to work in the store in 1986, and Beulah Davis retired in 1988 after working for Stewart for 30 years.
But one of the quirkiest things on the list of historic events is the sale of a pair of khakis to Allen Ginsberg in the 1990s when the poet couldn't find a pair in New York City that fit.
Over the years, there have probably been many other folks who discovered things at Stewart's that didn't seem to exist anywhere else.
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Delhi Bureau reporter Patricia Breakey covers Delaware County.
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