Enough with the spiders, m'kay?

We are having a heck of a year for spiders. Sure, over the season you see some spiders in the house. What's normal, a few a week? Something like that. Some weeks more, some weeks fewer.
This year, though, man. Yesterday I killed a half-dozen spiders, representing at least four species.

I watched the biggest one, the kind more associated with woodpiles than upstairs bathrooms, for quite some time before launching my attack. To do battle, I'd sent the girls out of the bathroom, and armed myself appropriately. This was no mere square-of-toilet-tissue spider. This was a two-paper-towel carnivorous arthropod, scuttling sideways up and down the wall along the corner with the mirror over the sink. It was in a state of high agitation, and get this: sparring with its image in the mirror. I was not imagining this. I observed for several minutes, hoping it'd get somewhere more accessible than just behind the outlet with the toothbrush and hair dryer plugs obstructing attack. (I prefer to handle these unpleasantries in one mighty blow.) And I swear, this one was fighting, rearing up on some back legs and waving some front ones around.

Maybe that's old news to people who know more about spiders than I, which is to say, nearly everyone. I had never seen a spider do that before -- kittens, yeah, but not spiders -- and found it distinctly unsettling.

Glossing over the embarassing events that followed (I admit the hair dryer came into play), I will just say this megaspider's last stand wasn't nearly as swift or clean as I'd have liked. I had to go back and clean up a leg. No, not my leg. Grrr.