Jack Attack vs The Arachnids

Life has been dreary as of late, hence me on a Friday night completely alone doing pointless things on my computer. But at least now I can write a blog post. I already decided what I wanted to write about. Spiders.

I am very much a stereotypical girl when it comes to three things: spiders, snakes, and mice/rats. When there was a mouse in my house last winter, I literally climbed onto the kitchen table and screamed as it ran circles around my kitchen floor while my rat terrier (yes, a breed that is bred specifically to KILL rodents) was more interested as to why I was on top of the table freaking out than the scurrying, disease-riddled, unbelievably fast mouse that was doing laps in my kitchen. (Okay, it probably wasn't disease-riddled but those things freak me out!)

And snakes? Don't even get me started on those. I have a story about the time my lovely friend Miss Roro and I saw one at the river (slithering up onto the rock where we were sitting, I might add) where I literally fell down about four times trying to run away from it.

Oh! I forgot to add, I'm also absolutely terrified of bats. That includes a story where I came across one in the woods one summer when my brother and dad and I were out chopping wood. (We're mountain folk.) There had been a bat in the tree my dad had fallen and I poked my foot around in the wood chips and it popped out hissing at me. I turned and booked it into the middle of the woods screaming my head off. I had no idea where I was going, I just decided that running into the woods was my best option. My dad, (who is becoming hard of hearing, anyway) had his ear muffs on and the chain saw going and he could still hear me screaming like a banshee.

But the thing about mice and snakes and bats is that I don't come across them very often. There are only a handful of times I've encountered those particular shriek-inducing creatures, but spiders, on the other hand, are always around. They're everywhere. I think that's probably why they terrify me the most.

It's been unbelievably hot here in Colorado the past couple weeks, and I have been leaving my windows open. As a result, the spiders have been coming in. I probably have been killing, I would say, about three spiders a day. That means, on average, I've killed 21 spiders in a week. 84 spiders in one month?! This is just not right, I say. Not right at all. This is one of the times that makes me wish I had a man around because I've never been good at killing spiders.

While I never particulary like killing spiders, I feel like I am much more capable when they are of a certain size. Nickel sized or smaller, I can handle it. It's the big ones where I really freak out. All my life, I have always had someone else to call to come and kill the behemoth, hairy ones. Until now. Now I have to do it on my own. And let me tell you, it hasn't been pretty.

I've found two very large ones in my bath tub, and instead of squishing them (I will get to that in just a second) I run the shower and aim the shower head at it so it will go down the drain. One of these spiders and I had an epic battle. I aimed the water at it, and it did its creepy fast-crawl thing as it desperately tried to get away. (You know what I'm talking about? Whenever you first see a spider, it's always stock still and completely unmoving. But the second you make any movement to kill it, it suddenly goes into some sort of turbo mode where it is all over the place and you don't know where the hell it's going to go and its eight legs are flying like crazy!)  Anyway, this particular spider abandoned the creepy fast-crawl strategy and instead decided to cling to the side of the tub for dear life. I tried desperately to break its death grip with the shower water, but I had to resort to collecting water in my hands and splashing the spider with it for it to finally let go. Then it curled up into a gross little ball, and I thought he was dead so I turned the water off only to see him unfurl himself and start doing his creepy fast-crawl again. The battle waged on. I finally watched it get swept down into the drain. I sat for a moment, reveling my victory, when I saw the bastard crawl its way right back out. I finally had to buck up and squish him.

I don't like the squish for two reasons. Number one: I don't like the way it feels when you squish them. I have to use about 50 paper towels just so I won't feel that moment where it pops. Ehh. I'm getting the chills right now just thinking about it. Number two: I mentioned before how they do their creepy fast-crawl thing. I'm always worried that as I go to kill it, it will jump on me or get on me somehow. I don't know about you guys, but whenever there is a spider on me, all hell breaks loose. So, lately, my squishing weapon of choice has been the shoe. I don't like that it is more messy than the paper towel method (Because then you have to wipe the guts off your shoe! And that's just gross.) but it creates more of a barrier between the spider and myself.

Today, I came across the biggest spider yet. This one, my friends, was a Goliath. He might not look that big in this video you are about to watch, but trust me, he was huge. (I have no idea why I make the noises that I do. It just comes out.)

Victory.