Thursday, June 23, 2005

Ick.

Well, I'm properly horrified. Last night I was in the kitchen persuing some rather common domestic chores when I hear a desperate voice from the living room call out to me.

"Spider! Big Spider!"

Now, I promise you that I'm not making fun of my husband, because he is honestly arachnophobic. He's not just scared of spiders, like me, he is terrified of them. To the point of all senses shutting down. Just want to get that out of the way so that you understand why I was the one with the spider killing New Balance sneaker.

Well, I am barefoot, so I run to find a shoe, and when I get into the living room I see this massive (or maybe not so much, but pretty darn big anyways) brown spider making it's way across the floor. I am terrified of finding a brown recluse in my house, so any time I see a brown spider, I try to get close enough to see what kind before I have to make any kind of contact with it. I couldn't tell what kind it was, but it didn't look like any spider I'd ever seen. The front half looked like a grass spider, but the back half looked lumpy and round, which isn't like a grass spider. So in a fit of bravery, which in my opinion is equaled only by Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, I bring down the sneaker and squash the heck out of it. The minute I bring the shoe up, dozens of little baby spiders pop off of it like popcorn and go skiddering in multiple directions. So I am screaming, trying to squash spiders roughly half the size of pin points with a shoe, and scaring the heck out of the dogs. I'm yelling for bug spray and all Steve can find is the spray we have to get bugs off of plants. I didn't know if it would work, but I went Lara Croft on those critters and started hopping around, spraying everything that moved. It was like a mini arachnid Hiroshima. I cleaned up everything I could, but I have this sneaking suspicion that one of the little hastareds got away and is planning revenge Godfather II style.

The thing I want to know is, how could that thing survive when we just had the house sprayed professionally that morning? The exterminators have some 'splainin to do.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

We've discussed and agreed: That's gross.

But I'm very proud of you. And Bear.

As to the bug guy, presuming he had the good stuff that kills the spiders, it doesn't kill everything right away. In fact, occasionally it drives hidden things out into the open. Probably this is what you encountered, a bug trying to escape for its annoying Hastared babies.