Well, it’s Fall. Autumn. Herbst. All around us, members of the Animal Kingdom are getting ready for winter. Squirrels are racing around collecting nuts everywhere you look. Birds are flying every which way fattening up for the cold months ahead, feeding off the ripe berries and juicy bugs that seem to have appeared in legions. It hasn’t been safe to prepare food or to eat it in our house with the windows open because the August Bees, as I call them, have become very aggressive. They swarm in through the kitchen windows, enticed by even the tiniest trace of food-like scent and make a real nuisance of themselves. Even the mosquitoes seem to be busier than usual, working harder than ever to suck our family dry for some last-minute nourishment for their egg stores.
While, by and large, watching our co-habitators preparing for the cold days ahead amuses me, there is one insect whose activities do not amuse me in the least. Like many people, my fear of this creature borders on phobic, and twice a year--Spring and Fall--we get a large number of these visitors in our home.
I’m talking about, of course, the spider. Huge, wicked-looking brown spiders with bodies about an inch long, and long spindly legs.
They like to sneak in when I’m airing the bedrooms on the ground floor. They like to surprise me in the night, just as I’m getting my son tucked into bed. They lurk in odd places. One day early last Spring, I found one on the hallway ceiling, then five minutes later, I found one on the wall of our utility room. My son saw one under our bed, which my husband graciously squished, and a day or so later, there was another only centimeters from the light plate where I had just turned on the hall light.
Last spring, there were so many spiders, and I so often encountered them with my son, that together we formed an efficient team of spider extermination: Upon a spider sighting, I run to grab the bleach-based, anti-bacterial bathroom cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. I spray the spider continuously until it stops running away (or, rather, it stops running toward me), while uncontrollable screeches and screams pass my lips and hysteria threatens to overwhelm my senses. Once it stops moving, I then drop several paper towels on top of the motionless body. I have to be careful, because sometimes they play dead, then try to come after me again when I get close enough. Quite like Michael Mayers. After I cover the body with the paper towels, my son comes to the rescue and stomps the hell out of it. Finally, I clean up the mess. The whole process takes about three minutes, start to finish, and it takes a good hour or so longer before my heart stops palpitating and my hands stop shaking.
Now that it’s fall, the spiders have returned, looking for warm dry places to sleep the big sleep until next spring. I just wish they wouldn’t look in our house.
Those nasty spiders have begun appearing again, just last week. Friday night, for example, I had a close encounter with two. I had left the dishwasher cracked open for a few minutes between washings, and when I returned and opened the door, in the dimness of twighlight I saw the telltale scuttling of long legs and slammed the door shut.
“What’s wrong?” my son asked.
“Spider,” I said, trying to keep calm. “There’s a spider in there.”
“Let me see,” he begged, over and over.
“No,” I insisted, still more. “If I open the door, it’ll run out.”
So, with the dishwasher less than half full, I turned it on full blast, full heat, and let it run the full cycle, hoping the spider would fall apart and go away.
Later that same night, I was putting my son to bed. As I passed from my bedroom to my son’s, I saw, from the very edge of my vision, a dark spot along the floorboard. Please don’t let that be a spider, I pleaded in silence. And then I chided myself. My imagination was running overdrive. It’s fall, and I’ve been worried about spiders, so now I’m seeing them where there aren’t any.
When I returned to my room, I glanced down, expecting to see empty space. But to my horror, there was a huge brown spider waiting for me. As if we’d never stopped, my son and I went immediately into Spider Slayer mode, working smoothly and efficiently through my bursts of rage and horror, until the creepy crawly critter was good and dead. I did, of course, have the presence of mind to snap some pics, beforehand.
The next day, Saturday, I opened the dishwasher and finished loading it with the dishes that didn’t get loaded the night before due to the emergency cycle run, and with that morning’s breakfast dishes, then ran the cycle again.
That afternoon, after unloading the now-very-clean dishes, I glanced into the food trap to see if the first spider had made it through or not. To my dismay, I saw two very long legs hanging out of it. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness within the machine, I could see that not just legs got stuck in the trap, but the whole damn body was wedged inside, very much still intact.
Suppressing a shudder, I braced myself for the inevitable. I was going to have to take that sucker out of there and throw it away.
I’m not going to bore you with more details, but suffice it to say that by the time I finished dislodging it from the food trap, taking pictures of it, and scooping it into the trash, my heart was going about a million miles an hour, and my hands were shaking badly. I managed to get some good shots, though, and you can view them below.
Knowing that big spiders like these really like living in your house is very disconcerting, and until the invasion season is over, you live through a kind of paranoid shock: Always on the lookout, always a little bit jittery, jumping at the tiniest shadows in the corners.
I did a little investigation to determine what kind of spiders these are, hoping to god they aren’t Brown Recluses. But I think they are. We don’t seem to be infested, but rather invaded bi-yearly, and I take precautions to keep their numbers to a minimum. Several years ago, I house-sat a Recluse-infested home, and I know for a fact that that isn’t us. But it still makes me anxious. I get nervous and jittery just writing about it.
I’m supposed to be a nature-lover. I’m a solitary eclectic practitioner of the nature (goddess) arts, and I know the spider is a revered creature. I know that it represents wisdom, self-knowledge, the weaving of time and sundry other wise and useful things. But I do not suffer spiders to live in my home. Not small ones, not harmless ones, not big fast ugly brown ones.
My rationale is that if I were to walk into a spider’s home, that spider would wrap me up like a big juicy burrito and suck me dry in a heartbeat. In fact, he’d probably throw a party, and one of his guests would have the bright idea to throw salt on the bite wound and call me a marguerita. Well, the same rules apply to my home. Invade my space, and you’re history. Basta.
Update: Thanks to another blogger's gentle direction, I spent a couple hours the other night searching for the identity of our arachnid guests. These are house spiders, otherwise known as Large European House Spiders. Large is right.
During my search, I also encountered this descriptive phrase on a French (?) university website:
Tegenaria atrica C. L. Koch (Araneae, Agelenidae), a common and harmless house-spider in central Europe, often received for identification from worried parents.
Yes, I would say that about sums it up. Though I'm not sure about the harmless part. Try telling my adrenal system that.
While, by and large, watching our co-habitators preparing for the cold days ahead amuses me, there is one insect whose activities do not amuse me in the least. Like many people, my fear of this creature borders on phobic, and twice a year--Spring and Fall--we get a large number of these visitors in our home.
I’m talking about, of course, the spider. Huge, wicked-looking brown spiders with bodies about an inch long, and long spindly legs.
They like to sneak in when I’m airing the bedrooms on the ground floor. They like to surprise me in the night, just as I’m getting my son tucked into bed. They lurk in odd places. One day early last Spring, I found one on the hallway ceiling, then five minutes later, I found one on the wall of our utility room. My son saw one under our bed, which my husband graciously squished, and a day or so later, there was another only centimeters from the light plate where I had just turned on the hall light.
Last spring, there were so many spiders, and I so often encountered them with my son, that together we formed an efficient team of spider extermination: Upon a spider sighting, I run to grab the bleach-based, anti-bacterial bathroom cleaner, and a roll of paper towels. I spray the spider continuously until it stops running away (or, rather, it stops running toward me), while uncontrollable screeches and screams pass my lips and hysteria threatens to overwhelm my senses. Once it stops moving, I then drop several paper towels on top of the motionless body. I have to be careful, because sometimes they play dead, then try to come after me again when I get close enough. Quite like Michael Mayers. After I cover the body with the paper towels, my son comes to the rescue and stomps the hell out of it. Finally, I clean up the mess. The whole process takes about three minutes, start to finish, and it takes a good hour or so longer before my heart stops palpitating and my hands stop shaking.
Now that it’s fall, the spiders have returned, looking for warm dry places to sleep the big sleep until next spring. I just wish they wouldn’t look in our house.
Those nasty spiders have begun appearing again, just last week. Friday night, for example, I had a close encounter with two. I had left the dishwasher cracked open for a few minutes between washings, and when I returned and opened the door, in the dimness of twighlight I saw the telltale scuttling of long legs and slammed the door shut.
“What’s wrong?” my son asked.
“Spider,” I said, trying to keep calm. “There’s a spider in there.”
“Let me see,” he begged, over and over.
“No,” I insisted, still more. “If I open the door, it’ll run out.”
So, with the dishwasher less than half full, I turned it on full blast, full heat, and let it run the full cycle, hoping the spider would fall apart and go away.
Later that same night, I was putting my son to bed. As I passed from my bedroom to my son’s, I saw, from the very edge of my vision, a dark spot along the floorboard. Please don’t let that be a spider, I pleaded in silence. And then I chided myself. My imagination was running overdrive. It’s fall, and I’ve been worried about spiders, so now I’m seeing them where there aren’t any.
When I returned to my room, I glanced down, expecting to see empty space. But to my horror, there was a huge brown spider waiting for me. As if we’d never stopped, my son and I went immediately into Spider Slayer mode, working smoothly and efficiently through my bursts of rage and horror, until the creepy crawly critter was good and dead. I did, of course, have the presence of mind to snap some pics, beforehand.
The next day, Saturday, I opened the dishwasher and finished loading it with the dishes that didn’t get loaded the night before due to the emergency cycle run, and with that morning’s breakfast dishes, then ran the cycle again.
That afternoon, after unloading the now-very-clean dishes, I glanced into the food trap to see if the first spider had made it through or not. To my dismay, I saw two very long legs hanging out of it. As my eyes adjusted to the dimness within the machine, I could see that not just legs got stuck in the trap, but the whole damn body was wedged inside, very much still intact.
Suppressing a shudder, I braced myself for the inevitable. I was going to have to take that sucker out of there and throw it away.
I’m not going to bore you with more details, but suffice it to say that by the time I finished dislodging it from the food trap, taking pictures of it, and scooping it into the trash, my heart was going about a million miles an hour, and my hands were shaking badly. I managed to get some good shots, though, and you can view them below.
Knowing that big spiders like these really like living in your house is very disconcerting, and until the invasion season is over, you live through a kind of paranoid shock: Always on the lookout, always a little bit jittery, jumping at the tiniest shadows in the corners.
I did a little investigation to determine what kind of spiders these are, hoping to god they aren’t Brown Recluses. But I think they are. We don’t seem to be infested, but rather invaded bi-yearly, and I take precautions to keep their numbers to a minimum. Several years ago, I house-sat a Recluse-infested home, and I know for a fact that that isn’t us. But it still makes me anxious. I get nervous and jittery just writing about it.
I’m supposed to be a nature-lover. I’m a solitary eclectic practitioner of the nature (goddess) arts, and I know the spider is a revered creature. I know that it represents wisdom, self-knowledge, the weaving of time and sundry other wise and useful things. But I do not suffer spiders to live in my home. Not small ones, not harmless ones, not big fast ugly brown ones.
My rationale is that if I were to walk into a spider’s home, that spider would wrap me up like a big juicy burrito and suck me dry in a heartbeat. In fact, he’d probably throw a party, and one of his guests would have the bright idea to throw salt on the bite wound and call me a marguerita. Well, the same rules apply to my home. Invade my space, and you’re history. Basta.
Update: Thanks to another blogger's gentle direction, I spent a couple hours the other night searching for the identity of our arachnid guests. These are house spiders, otherwise known as Large European House Spiders. Large is right.
During my search, I also encountered this descriptive phrase on a French (?) university website:
Tegenaria atrica C. L. Koch (Araneae, Agelenidae), a common and harmless house-spider in central Europe, often received for identification from worried parents.
Yes, I would say that about sums it up. Though I'm not sure about the harmless part. Try telling my adrenal system that.
