I am the Spider Slayer of the household. Brett doesn't like to squish them if he doesn't have to. Lately, we have had a serious amount of spiders in our house. Not unusual for this time of year, but man have they been big! I'm talking bodies the sizes of quarters, with legs, they are about the size of half dollars. Yikes! I usually whack them with a fly swatter, if they are in optimal position like the floor or an easily accessible wall.
Now, I kind of like spiders because they eat smaller insects. The reason I don't like spiders - they get in your bedroom and bite you while you sleep. When you wake up, you have mysterious bites and can end up feeling violated and sick.
In the past, I have been incredibly diligent about making sure the windows in my car are up before I park it for the night in the garage. With Ty adding his flare of distraction or wanting one of the back windows down for the ride home from the sitter's house, I continue to leave windows down while it is in the garage. One morning, I was driving to work, still a little bit dark and there, dangling in front of my face was a spider. I had to grab him with my bare hands. I couldn't get the heebie jeebies out for the entire day.
When Brett and I moved into the house we are in now, we had just had my sister and her husband over and they left. I went down to start some laundry and found the biggest spider I have ever seen. It put the half dollar spiders we are seeing now, to shame. I called them to ask if it when they put the fake spider down there because I didn't recall them going down there. They had no idea what I was talking about. I showed the spider to Brett. He left the room. I was left thinking, "how in the world should I approach this thing?"
Some of you may ask why I asked myself this. Well, let me tell you. There is always this lingering feeling that the shoes you are wearing aren't flat enough to squash the spider efficiently, meaning if you were wearing tennis shoes with treads, the spider COULD get through the treads and get on TOP of your shoe and then crawl up your leg and send you into a screaming frenzy. What if you were barefoot? I was this time around. If you go to get an adequate pair of shoes on and you come back and the spider isn't there, are you going to be sleeping that night? NEVER take your eye off the spider. EVER. There is also the thought that if you use a paper towel, it is rather difficult to hold a paper towel with enough flat surface to do the squashing while having a sufficient grip on the paper towel to avoid it jumping on TOP of the paper towel and up your arm, commencing the same type of screaming frenzy. Okay, so use a tissue? Well, HOW MANY should you use? One, the spider might break through the delicate tissue. Two, you may have created too many ridges (see paper towel example). If you use a tool, like wood or a newspaper, you again run the risk of it getting on TOP of your tool. More screaming frenzies.
Just as I am running through my options and haven't found one that I am satisfied with, Brett returns to the basement with a BB gun. Yes, a BB gun. He took care of the spider with a BB gun. Yes, a BB gun. Right there, that should tell you how large this spider was because most spiders would get blown across a floor with the air puff of a BB gun. Not this one. Huge, I tell ya. Huge.
I keep meaning to go around the outside of the house and spray Home Defense because it really does work. But I am sitting here blogging and it is dark and I really do not want to get under the deck in the dark. That's a concussion waiting to happen.
Signing off for now, to all of you near and far and to those of you scanning your walls and ceilings for spiders, until next time...
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