Choose Your Weapon

There are in existence many ways in which to kill a large spider or other sordid insects that find their way into the home. Some people squash them with shoes as they make an attempt to flee; others swat at them with brooms. I have been in situations where the person endeavoring to deal with live-bug-removal just runs around in circles while screaming.

When my husband encounters something that belongs outside in the comfort of the home he generally feels the need to call a family council to discuss how to deal with said intruder. This isn’t a “should I kill it or let it loose” assembly, but rather a panicked “what should I do, what should I do” type of deal.

Over the weekend he spent some of his time down in the basement cleaning up and organizing his plethora of tools and other assorted, inherited junk. Our basement cannot be accessed from outside, and there are but three small windows that let in a very minimal amount of light. Regardless of this, all sorts of bugs and spiders manage to find their way in. (During the summer months we run a dehumidifier, which cuts down on the number of bugs tremendously).

My husband hadn’t been at the task for long when he shouted up the steps to announce that there was a giant spider with him, and asked, please, how he should go about slaying the beast. Because, really, what is a mere mortal to do when faced with such a formidable foe? I told him vaguely that he should kill it, as I am quite convinced that spiders of gigantic proportions are possessed of some sort of brain and it would probably find its way up the stairs, under the basement door, and into the kitchen where a lot of terrified bellowing would take place and smelling salts would be required. Or the baby would find it and decide that it was much more fun to hunt and kill her own food than to be strapped into the highchair and handfed Cheerios.

After searching for a contrivance with which to kill the spider my husband picked up a hammer; with this hammer he dealt a mighty deathblow and smote the monster. I felt that such a tool should make an awful mess of a thing like a spider. He corrected my assumption by informing me that as long as a person regulates their strike accordingly, it is a fine alternative for a shoe. Of course, it’s always handy to have a Shop-Vac lying around to suck up the mess with.