Another Spider Episode

As I was making my bed this morning I spotted a teensy weensy spider crawling on a pillow that had been sitting on the floor all night. No big deal--I didn't even really flinch. I quickly and mercifully ended its life, then flushed it down the toilet.



After that I noticed a tremulous spider with long, bendy legs right in the middle of my bed on top of the quilt. It looked like it had already been squashed a bit, and since it was still twitching I didn't know if it was already dead or not. Ewww, it reminded me of a you know what, so I wanted to take a closer look before ridding myself of the beast.

Even though I am no longer living in the Brown Recluse capital of the world, there are still a few of these infamous critters that have chosen to reside in the desert. Hoping and praying that this was just a wanna be BR, I grabbed some toilet paper and picked the thing up by a leg. I got nose to nose to that spider analyzing its pancake head to make sure that the markings weren't really those belonging to a true BR. At that moment I was having a nightmarish vision of it regaining strength to jump onto my face and bite the fire out of me disfiguring my face for life.

After careful inspection and to my great satisfaction, I decided that was in fact not a Brown Recluse. It was one of those smart spiders who evolved into a BR look-alike to avoid being eaten. Just kidding. But there really is a non-poisonous spider that closely resembles the venomous Brown Recluse.

I was a happy girl!!

Black Attack

For the past few months our home has been invaded by a militia of little black water beetles. They are actually kind of cute and a bit smaller than a lady bug. The bugs have stirred up some long forgotten childhood memories. When I was about Mullin's age, I lived here in the desert, and every summer I would collect these same little water beetles. I would find one of those gallon ice cream buckets my mom had stashed away in the cupboard, fill it with dirt, sticks, leaves, grass and a small amount of water. Then I would find as many black bugs as I could and put them in their new home. I am sure they loved being there as much as I loved watching them be in there! Mullin and Lincoln don't seem to want to do the same thing, oh well. I have actually felt badly about having to flush some down the toilet lately. Sometimes I just throw them in the garbage unsmooshed, and that makes my conscience feel a little better.

I am getting a little tired of the black bugs coming into our home, but that is nothing compared to the invasion we experienced last week by a much larger, blacker and more evil creature.

I never thought a quarter-sized, venomous villain could make me feel so vulnerable, but when I noticed a thick web of steel creeping out from underneath my home school cabinet/hutch located in my kitchen, I knew what lurked there. I tried to tell myself no way, it just couldn't be, but when I slashed the web with a ruler and felt the strength of it, I couldn't lie to myself any longer. This was a job for hubby hero. I made him pull out the furniture to verify that it was in fact a wicked BLACK WIDOW, and it was. I shuddered the moment I laid my eyes on it because I always stick my arm under that piece of furniture to retrieve toys and such. I have seen Shiloh do the very same thing. Thank the good Lord we were never bitten!!!!!!! Needless to say this widow will never eat another mate ever again! I still get chills when I open our home school cabinets. EW!!

Yum

I don't have to worry about smooshing those wolf spiders anymore... Shiloh likes to eat them.

Spiders

I just got through telling how wonderful spring is. Well, one spring thing I don't like is Wolf Spiders!! They come suddenly one day out of nowhere. I know they aren't poisonous, but they are so ugly. And the fat ones make a mess on the carpet!! Throughout spring and summer I must have a paper towel in hand every time we open the door to go outside. It's like they are just patiently waiting to scurry in! Eew!
There are worse things, though, then Wolf Spiders.
In fact, a few years ago we had a Black Widow infestation in our back yard.


Mark would laugh at me everytime I went into the back yard because I would have to do my "Black Widow check". I would slowly and carefully walk along our fence to see if there were any new webs. I got pretty good at identifying the widows' webs. One good thing about these creepy crawlers is that they usually stay on their webs, but my biggest fear was that the boys, when playing outside, would accidentally happen upon a web and become a victim. Mullin knew not to go near the fence, and he wouldn't dare. Lincoln, on the other hand, was a bit too young to understand the danger. All of my checking eventually paid off because one day, as I was poking
around in their outside toys, I spotted the deadly spider on the strap of one of their backpacks. You
can imagine my horror! I don't remember seeing any
last year, but it is about time for me to start checking again!


I haven't had much luck with spiders, so I guess that is why I dislike them so much-- Well, except for those really pretty garden spiders that spin beautiful webs. Those are neat. Shortly
after Mark and I got married, I discovered the apartment we lived in was infested with the infamous brown recluse. I worked as a nanny at the time and the kids' dad owned an exterminating company. He confirmed my worst fear!! Our landlord seemed extremely put out by the fact she had to have the pest control guys out at least once a month to spray our apartment. This was a huge test for our marriage! Mark acted like the problem wasn't that big of a deal, and I was a basket case. One night as I was taking Lasagne out of the oven, I noticed something on my shirt. It was a huge Brown Recluse! I screamed like I was being kidnapped, flicked it off with the spatula I was holding, and ripped off my clothes to see if I had been bitten. Mark came tearing out of the bedroom and through hysterical sobs I explained what had happened. Crying, I called my mom while Mark looked for the spider. I wasn't going to bed until it had been found and murdered! He finally found it behind the refrigerator. I am sure some of you are thinking I am just a crazy nut, but I was sincerely afraid. In the mornings, the first thing I would see would be a fresh brown recluse still alive on the glue board we had by our bed. We had glue boards all over our one bedroom apartment. When it was all said and done, I counted over 70 trapped recluses. It was a good day when we left that nasty place. After packing all of our belongings into black garbage bags with gloves on, I lined up all of those glue boards and left them on the kitchen counter. I hope our landlord was the one that had to throw them away. I should have called Andy Wise.












This brings back terrible memories!!