Wednesday, August 29, 2007

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.

6 comments:

  1. Everytime you kill a spider jesus cries...

    Ummm ... no, thats not right

    Everytime you kill a Fairy a spider cries...

    Or summat

    Whatever, you must NOT kill spiders... cos spiders eat Flies ... and I cant bear Flies.

    //shudder// YUK!

    If a spider lives in your house, just name it (Harry, Fred Charley... whatever) Makes 'em seem so much less threatening

    Or summat

    J

    ;-)

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  2. Ayuh. But this one would've had to be named Ah-nold. And he was doomed, regardless... there are no flies in the house of the size it would've taken to nourish him.

    I hear ya though. To be fair, I don't kill the ones out of arm's reach. I'm not tall, so spiders in my house have a decent chance of being left alone if Mr. Sandy doesn't see 'em. He's tall. :)

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  3. I used to live in a rotting old cabin in the woods that was positively infested. My friends called it Casa de Arana. I've no problem with ants, snakes, or mice, but but my true phobia is, naturally, spiders. I kept 3 cans of Raid strategically placed around the house. None of this paper towel business for me. It would get so bad in the summer that I would have to check my shower and look at both sides of my bath towels EVERY morning lest I end up having to dash out of the shower all soapy and go looking for the Raid. It's environmentally incorrect I know, but if there were that many inside, I'm sure the outside population was plenty healthy.
    Karen

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  4. Spiders in the bath towels... ugh. No pet names are going to help with that kind of horror.

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  5. This should make you feel better about you spider issues.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/31spider.html

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  6. "...a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park..."

    Impressive.

    Ah, to be in north Texas in late August...

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