Now that I am thoroughly freaked out by Neve’s brown recluse incident, it seems fitting that I should be bombarded with more spider fun.

Incident 1:
There I was, in my bathroom, brushing my teeth, innocently preparing for bed. There was Sushi, hangin’ out in the sink, getting in my way. And there, as I leaned close to the wall and looked in the mirror to check my flossing, was a big ol’ spider. Right on the wall, not far from my head.
Sidebar: If you don’t already know, I am terrified of vermin of the 8 legged variety. We’re talking full-on phobia here. I can’t even get close enough to kill them. If I am home alone, I try to get one of the animals to dispatch said creature. Failing that, it takes a whole lot of working myself up to
squash it, accompanied by some major adrenaline, goosebumps, and cold sweat. And screaming. I must look like some tribal warrior heading to an inevitable death, shouting a war chant. And then I have trouble
disposing of the carcass. Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter. They still suck.
Anyway, back to the story. I see this spider hanging out on my bathroom wall and after I jump back and cry out, I do what comes naturally in those situations: I grab the cat out of the sink and hold her out toward the wall, hoping she’ll spot it. She does. I set her down on the tub and jump back away. She looks
at the spider, looks at me, yawns, and nonchalantly exits the room. Crap!!!!
Now I am frantically looking around for something I can smash it with. I don’t want to call Paul upstairs now because it’s on the move and I don’t want it to get away before he is able to come to the rescue. There’s an empty perfume box…..it’s the only thing close at hand that will do the trick. So with a loud scream and an even louder smack, Mr. Spider met his doom. Even better, he stuck to the perfume box so I didn’t have to worry about wiping him up with a tissue.

Incident 2:
I was feeling a little edgy after the aforementioned spider smackdown. I threw away the box (holding it out at arm’s length all the while……I wonder if I can burn the box and spider in a fire….). I rinsed my mouth (still had toothpaste in there) and was going for the towel when I spotted yet another big ugly on the wall opposite the one where ugly 1 had met his doom moments ago. Okaaaayyyyy……well my nerves are still shot from the first guy, and since this one was staying put, I yelled for Paul, who made his way upstairs and smooshed it
rather handily, thank you very much. But I wasn’t happy. Two spiders in my bathroom (which is in my bedroom to make matters worse) at the same time. Not cool. Not cool at all. And Paul thinks burning dead spiders is a waste. I really need to break out the vacuum. Get under all the beds and behind all the furniture. Satisfy myself that there are none others lurking in the dark recesses of my home. Sent a chill up my spine just thinking about it. Maybe I’d go down to the kitchen and get a drink.

Incident 3:
On the ceiling. In the kitchen. Mere moments after Incident 2, which was itself mere moments after Incident 1.
WTF??!!!!!
Another job for Paul. Even when I am home alone I don’t attempt a kill while they are above me. They could fall on me, and no amount of anti-crazy meds could bring me back from that. (ok, I exaggerate…..but trust me when they’ve dropped on me in the past it’s not been pretty.)
3 spiders. In one night. Practically at the same time. In my home, my sanctuary. They must totally be out to get me.

Incident 4:
After a fitful night of sleep (spider dreams anyone???) I groggily make my way to the coffee maker and then over to the couch. It’s almost bus stop time, and it’s still somewhat dark out. I don’t have any lights on downstairs but you can see pretty well with the sun starting to come up. So it’s no problem for me to see the spider making his way quickly and creepily past my feet next to the couch and toward the fireplace. Paul’s not home, and even if he were, this guy is too fast. Thankfully I have my hard soled slippers on. I jump on him. It doesn’t kill him. Again, and he’s slowing down. Third time is the charm. Trouble is, I now have spider guts on my slippers and I no longer wish to be associated with them. I fact, I need the fireplace to be working so I can burn them. No, not burn. Incinerate. Damn spiders. Instead I take the dog outside and scrape my slippers hard on the concrete sidewalk outside.
I can burn that later.

Other “not quite incidents, but bad nonetheless”:
In the morning there are hundreds upon hundreds of “sheet webs” all over my lawn. Actually, they are there all the time, but it’s the morning dew that makes them visible. These are created by funnel spiders who trap bugs from the lawn to eat. They are not huge, but neither are they small. I prefer to pretend that I don’t know they are there. In the morning with all the dew, I cannot do that. They are
also all over the gravel driveway. I take perverse pleasure in running over them with my car. Hmmm…..can’t burn that later…….but I can take it through a high powered car wash.There is a giant spider carcass in my garage right now. Paul killed him the other night when coming home from doing van work. I swear, this
thing is big…even dead and all curled up…..still big. I get goosebumps just thinking about it. ANd I certainly can’t walk near it, all squished on the garage floor. If I spent any measurable time in the garage……I’d have to burn the floor.
The girls spotted a big fast spider in the sunroom last night. Paul killed him. I do not like all of these spider sightings all of a sudden.
Now I am jumping at every little dust bunny, every little bit of cat fur.
And what’s worse, I know there are some giants out there. I’ve seen them in the past. They haunt my nightmares. Three, in particular stand out, and I wish I had pictures of them for proof.
The first one was the worst. We had lived in Virginia maybe 5 or 6 months. It was a humid night and we were coming home from the laundry mat.
At the time we lived in an apartment in a house surrounded by huge trees. We didn’t get a lot of light in because of them, and there were a lot of bugs. Perfect for spiders. But up until that night I hadn’t seen anything worse than what I’d seen growing up in NY or NJ. BUt that night……….it was dark, and there was a light on outside the front door. And above the front door……the horror. I swear on all that is holy, I seriously thought someone’s pet tarantula had escaped. I have seen wolf spiders, I have seen dock spiders…..I have Never seen anything like that guy. I swear he was the size of my hand. And he was hanging out right above the doorway. I froze about 20 feet away. There was no way in hell I
was walking through that doorway. Paul had to (bravely) run in and come back out with a propane torch. He had himself a nice spider bbq before I
I could go in the house. Paul thinks live spiders are perfectly fine to burn.
The second one, we named. And we named him for the noise he made when he “jumped” off of our back porch into the leaf pile. “Thud”. He was almost as big
as the first guy, but not as quite. I didn’t go out onto our back porch for weeks after that.
The third one, I can still hardly believe I saw. Thankfully my mother did, too, so I have a witness. I had pulled up to her house in late September to drop something off and by her front door was what I thought, a fake spider. And I said to myself, “It’s kind of early for her to be putting out her Halloween stuff”.
But I did think I’d give her props for finding such a life – like fake widow spider. I mean, obviously it was fake. It was brown, shaped like a widow spider, and
had a giant fat body and long, long legs. I mean a spider that looks like that with a diameter of like 3 or 4 inches just can’t be real. Holy Crap he was real.
He even scared my mother….the master gardener who is totally used to co-existing with giant garden spiders. As I recall, she dispatched him with one of those electrified rackets that are generally used for flies and mosquitoes. And we both learned that there exists a spider called a “brown widow”. Great.
Anyway, that’s enough spider talk for me for today. I am sure I will have more in the future. I hate spiders, I see them way too often, and I like to whine about it.