Wretched Arachnids

Anyone who knows me understands that I am terrified of spiders. I hate hate hate them. Not just because of what they look like and how they eat, but they are sneaky. You can't feel all eight of their creepy legs crawling on you. I don't know how many times I've had one crawling on me, and then to my surprise, whoever is sitting by me brushes it off. I literally freeze when that happens. There's a rumor out there that a person eats an average of I don't even care how many spiders in their sleep because even just one is absolutely mortifying. They sneak into our beds and live in our snowboots during the summer months. I absolutely hate them.


Back in November 2006 when we came here to look at houses, I discovered that this town has some very large furry juicy spiders. We were in the basement of a house that I really thought was going to be the one. The basement was finished, which was appealing to me. And no crawl space either. Suddenly my husband said, "Yeah, that's a pretty big spider." Of course my first reaction was to duck. Then I turned and saw it. On the wall. I believe it was a wolf spider, at least it looked like one, but blacker and bigger. Our realtor, a wonderful wonderful lady replied very casually and almost happily with, "Oh look! There goes another one!" I looked and another one was scurrying across the floor. The realtor walked right over, and without a second thought she stomped on it.


That was it. I wasn't moving into that house. We kept looking.


After purchasing this house, my husband immediately got a contract with Terminix. I didn't even have to ask or suggest it. We bought new construction so I knew our chances of having any of those furry beasts in our home was slim.


Terminix has been great. So far, I haven't seen a single one of those furry monsters. But I did discover that truly, the town we live in, is Spider Heaven. I'm not kidding. You seriously won't see a single ant scurry across the sidewalk or driveway. No ant hills, nada. But I can GUARANTEE you that you will see a spider, about the size of a dime, scramble by. They plaster the foundations of our houses, too. These little guys are everywhere.

We've lived here 8 months now, and Terminix has been out at least once every single month. I call even at the sight of ONE spider in my house. A neighbor who thought he was being helpful informed me that spraying doesn't really work. The spiders hold their breath. I didn't even know spiders had lungs.



Guess what my boys are doing right now with their buddy from across the street?




Yep. They are catching those spiders. Owen is scraping them off the foundation with that frisbee, their brave friend is holding the jar, and Ethan is faithfully and accurately counting them.

When I took this picture today there were fifteen in that jar. FIFTEEN.

I asked the boys what they were going to do with them when they were done. They said they would let them go in the vacant lot behind our house. It is time to call Terminix.