Heather the Spider Slayer

Yes, that was a lame reference to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. You'll never guess what I've been up to!

As we moved into this house at the end of September of last year, certain things were, erm.. um... "taken care of" by the previous owners. Loosely translated, this means that we had no idea our home would be overtaken by these nasty little critters often referred to as spiders. Sure, of course we expected some. I mean, this is a house with a dark basement, right?

However, let me share with you my experiences.

#1. When we first realized there may have been spiders, we put traps D-O-W-N. Exterminators would be impressed by the quickness in our response time. This did not comfort me when we had the water heater incident. A plumber had come to help us replace the dip tube in the water heater, and my part in this task was to turn on the hose leading from the water heater to an outflowing drain when I got home, and turn it off before bedtime. Easy enough, right? WRONG! After turning on the water, I decided to leisurely pass the time in our living room reading... Duncan came to me and began using the "Timmy-is-stuck-in-the-well" voice often reserved for emergencies. I went running downstairs and, upon hitting the linoleum, did the splits in a way that an olympic gymnast would be proud. As I was attempting to gain traction to stand up, I saw a group of dead spider bodies floating by me. This illustrates the image. I did what anyone in this situation would do: I screamed and clawed my way back up the stairs.

#2. Pulling weeds outside. I was pulling to my hearts content only to see beady eyes staring up at me. In my weed pulling gear (read: tank top, shorts, and flip flops), I did what any sane person would do: I screamed and ran away. After I halfway caught my breath, I described the spider to Jeff. He indicated it sounded like, from my description, a black widow spider that was big enough to have it's own SyFy show.

#3. I took Duncan outside to use the restroom. Little did I know, as I closed the door behind me, a spider would be waiting to eat my head. I screamed and called Jeff (who, thank goodness, was right inside the door). He quickly eliminated my problem and said I "MAY" have been over-exaggerating how big it was. Who, me?

#4. This one was in the basement. It was probably super close to being dead, but I swear to you, even in it's last throws of life, it was trying to kill me and suck all of my blood out. I screamed (to which Jeff was not amused... apparently 6:30 in the morning is a little too "early" to be frightened a spider will take my life), grabbed Jeff's shoes, and began whacking away.

***Here's a tip for all you would-be-spider-slayers. NEVER use your own shoes. What if it gets stuck, alive, to the bottom of them, and you don't know and they wake up and kill you and suck your blood out?!***

#5. I let Duncan out last week at 6:30. I noticed nothing unusual. I let him out again around 7:45 before I left. He immediately ran outside and began pulling at a spiderweb that can only be described as Charlotte's Web-worthy, except in the middle it was written: "I'm going to kill you and suck all your blood out! HAHA! With much love, but even more love after I kill you, The Nasty Ugly Spider." You can't make this stuff up. As the spider closed in on Duncan, I screamed and quickly ran to his aid. After getting Duncan out of the sticky (har har) situation, I ran inside to grab Jeff's shoe. The spider at this time had now attached itself to a top piece of wood on our deck... out of reach of the shoe. I ran inside and found the next best thing: a broom. While the shoe would not attach to the broom, I used it in poking, slashing, and finally stabbing actions when the spider fell to his doom. Jeff had a good laugh imagining what the neighbors saw.

#6. Yesterday, I found a BIG spider (Jeff even begrudgingly admitted it was big -- "not smallish" was the term he used, but any victory is a victory) on our outside patio table. I screamed and began using my MacGyver like skills to bring it to its demise. I began throwing Duncan's toys at it until 1 finally made contact. At this point, I moved in for the kill (read: about 3 feet away) and continued to throw bigger, heavier objects at it until it had to have been dead. Needless to say, when I was satisfied he was dead, the air strikes stopped. Jeff laughed as he sorted through the rubble (Duncan's toys, garden hose apparatuses, decorative stones from out back, you get the idea), but then agreed with me (at least in my head) that our lives were in danger and I had no other choice.

You know, it's hard saving the world from spiders, but someone's gotta do it. Hope all is well with you and yours. :)