If I Had to Choose, I Would Pick a Spider

So, I know I've blogged about this topic before. Some of you may remember and think that I ought to give it up already. I, however, never tire of it.

My husband has a strange relationship with bugs. In the great outdoors he handles them and inspects them with our son; the two of them allow bugs to crawl about on their hands, wrists, and sometimes even to the upper extremities of their arms. (I feel that a bug has gone far enough when it traverses any point more than one inch above the wrist; they have a way of getting lost once inside clothing).

Once a bug crosses the outer wall of our home, however, my husband views it in an entirely different light. After spotting one, he jumps about, shrieks, and carries on in a way that would make any little girl proud. (Unless, of course, she is relying on him to kill the leggy invader). It's really a very strange thing.

If he has recently slaughtered a bug, or has witnessed me in the act of doing so, he gasps horrendously and jumps four feet in the air anytime a fleck of dust so much as floats past his pinky toe. The kids have picked up on this, and while Daddy is in the midst of reading about Noah and the flood at bedtime, they'll take turns tickling his leg hair with their little fingers or poking him in the foot with some long and pointy toy just so they can watch him go into convulsions.

My husband and I try and rotate when it comes to killing the yucky buggies that we find in the house. Mostly I kill anything in the basement because my husband somehow manages to convince himself that they can't climb the stairs into our living space. I'm pretty sure that anything that can climb walls and walk on the ceiling can find its way up into the kitchen, so if I spot a spider in the cellar I am going to make a valiant effort to squash it so that it doesn't find me and try to suck my face off while I sleep.

There is one bug in particular, though, that we are both deathly afraid of. The many legged, and very freaky, house centipede. The other day I watched helplessly as one scrambled into my laundry sorter in the basement. I certainly didn't want it jumping on me as I dug through piles of dirty clothes. Nor was I willing to neglect the laundry any longer than I already had. So I called the man of the house.

I really wasn't expecting him to ride majestically down the basement stairs on his white steed, and vanquish the fearful beast, but I figured that at least I would get some moral support. After we both stood staring at the laundry sorter for a few minutes while I scratched my head and he persisted in alternately jumping and shrieking every two-point-six seconds, my husband had a brilliant idea and left me alone with the monster while he went to fetch his long-handled grilling tongs.

What a picture I'm sure we made as my husband gingerly plucked through dirty tee shirts, jeans, and undies with his tongs while I made sure to keep myself safely out of range of his flailing limbs. Somewhere near the bottom of the pile the beast flung itself from the sorter and fled to a safer, darker corner where I am sure it remains, biding its time, making its plans, and growing bigger by the second.

We Have a Cricket in Our Cave

The other night my husband returned from spelunking in the basement and informed me that there was a hideous cricket of monstrous size hanging around down there. Given his proclivity toward telling tales that aren’t so much lies as they are pretty darn tall and his intense exaggerations, I smiled and nodded with raised and knowing eyebrows during most of his description.

“…and it has leopard spots, and it can jump really far, it’s huge!…”

“Its back legs have knees!”

“It attacked me!”

Sure. Right. A Cave Cricket with leopard spots that’s as big as a small dog; and right in our basement too. Uh-huh.

Nonetheless, I felt a little cautious as I did the laundry downstairs in its lair. Bugs of Unusual Size seem to be frequenting the underground bottom level of our home. The previous week I had slain a rather large black spider with a gallon bucket of bleach as my only weapon: turns out that a gallon of bleach is a heavy and effective tool for squashing the life out of unwelcome arachnids.

It certainly did not help me feel any better about the cricket of much largeness when a few days later my Dad started telling me about a fellow he works with whose shed is suffering from an infestation of Cave Crickets.

“They’re big and move really fast. They prefer to hide, but when they feel threatened one of their defense mechanisms is to jump at you. And supposedly they have teal blood.”

Nice. So not only did I have some freaky monster hiding out in my basement, I also felt badly about basically telling my husband that he needed to get a grip on his fantastical imagination. I’m afraid that my disbelief may come back to haunt me in the form of a Cave Cricket attacking me and sucking my face off.

*For more fun tales involving my super-silly husband click on "the husband" label below.
*To see a real live picture of the scary monster described in this story click here.

How the Spider Almost Killed Us- Part 2

Having been subjected to the agitated nerves of my husband for a too-long period of time, I noticed my own nerves were becoming a little frayed. I didn’t mind the company of the spider when I knew exactly where it was, but for some moments I failed to be able to locate its position and that made me a little uneasy. Now that neither of us had the intruder in our sights Sean’s agitation grew to a feverish pitch and he began flailing about in his seat while firmly gripping the steering wheel betwixt his hands. “Thrash around really fast! Thrash around hard! If it’s on you it’ll get squished! COME ON!”

As nicely as I could I informed him that I would not be giving myself whiplash on account of a bug, and that if he didn’t calm himself and focus on not killing us all I was liable to commence shouting. Although highly offended at my lack of respect for his orders, he settled down enough to regain control of the car and his senses and I went back to the task of locating our missing friend. During this time my left bum cheek began to get a tad bit numb, as I had rolled all of my weight onto it in an unconscious attempt to lean away from the spider’s last known location.

At long last the spider’s whereabouts were once again known to us. Earlier in our voyage I had determined not to smoosh the spider because I did not want it falling from its perch on the windshield into my lap or my hair while in the throes of death. But that was a good twelve minutes previous and our health and well-being did not seem to be in such jeopardy then as they were now, what with all of the reckless nighttime driving and the delicate drizzling rain that was now glossifying the roadway and rendering our trip even more treacherous.

I kept a close eye on the spider while I riffled through the glove compartment in search of a napkin to smother it with. I made sure that my aim was good and true and I smote the spider with my mighty napkin against the windowpane. My victory was short lived. I was now belted to my seat with my right arm stuck straight out in front of me and holding a folded napkin against the windshield. If I moved my arm the spider was likely to fall amongst my hairs where it would stay, impervious to washing, until its body completed the cycle of decay. This would never do.

After some deliberation I thought that my best strategy would be to slowly slide the napkin down until it hovered above the dashboard. Then I could gently pull the napkin away from the glass and the spider carcass would fall harmlessly onto the console. My body tried to slink away from my hand as the napkin squeaked its way down the glass. Down, down, down, until I could finally pull my hand away from the window. Ever so gingerly I retracted my arm back toward my body. I looked into the napkin. There was nothing there.

Great. I glanced back at the windshield and tried to tune out the screeching coming from the opposing seat. There was definitely some spider guts glistening in the moonlight up there. If the thing wasn’t dead yet it would be soon, and in its current state the spider couldn’t possibly do much harm.

The banshee in the driver’s seat was at it again, “It’s still alive! It’s still alive! I think it’s crawling on meeeeeeee!” “Listen, you,” I replied, “if its gutless body is around here somewhere it is most likely on me!” to which I received a long diatribe on the correct method for killing spiders and that inept people like me should not be allowed to kill them. Even it its death that stupid spider was a force to be feared and reckoned with.

We arrived home at long last. The car was parked, the engine turned off, and I opened my car door. As I exited the vehicle the small body of a dying spider tucked in its legs and rolled off of my lap onto the seat I had just occupied. It was on me after all. And my husband, all six-foot-two-inches of him, started shrieking again and yelping directives on how to properly dispose of the mostly-dead spider. Using the napkin of almost-death he plucked the spider from the seat, squished it firmly in his hand, and placed the napkin into his pocket.

A short time later, when Sean put his hand into his pocket, he suddenly remembered that the dead spider and its napkin style coffin were still there. He immediately began the ants-in-my-pants dance with a few shouts and screams thrown in. He jiggled his way over to the garbage can where the scary spider was finally laid to rest. I was never so glad to be rid of a spider in my life. Except for that one time a giant man-eating spider found its way into the entertainment unit. I was pretty glad to be rid of that one too.

How the Spider Almost Killed Us- Part 1

It has been hypothesized that perhaps some fatal car accidents are the result of creepy crawly insects. A person is driving along, hopefully obeying the rules of the road, hopefully not straying too far from the posted speed limit, when a spider is spotted somewhere inside the vehicle scurrying along, its eight legs carrying it closer and closer to the driver of the vehicle.

A part of me has always thought that this, although potentially a good theory, could only apply to those people who have a morbid fear of arachnids that sends them into an immediate state of mind numbing, paralyzing panic and possibly even a coma. Boy was I wrong.

My husband has an interesting relationship with all things buggy, as I shared here. He doesn’t seem to mind them when he is out of doors, but when in a confined space with insects and spiders his mind begins to plays tricks on him and he begins to have fits.

About ten seconds into our fifteen-minute drive home from church on Saturday night, Sean pointed a tremulous finger toward our windshield and demanded, “Is that inside?” I stared through the darkness and concentrated on the city bus in front of us toward which I thought he pointed and tried to make sense of the question. “Is that inside? I think it is! It’s inside!” he declared in a voice that was clearly agitated and full of fear. “Don’t you see it? Right there! Are you blind?”

I don’t appreciate being shouted at. So I fixed him with a glare that was wasted in the shadows of night, told him that I could make no sense of his gibbering, and said that when his powers of communication returned I would be more than happy to listen to his troubles. He made a noise I had never heard before, something between a yelp and a groan, and finally made me understand that we were trapped in a moving vehicle at the mercy of a roving spider.

How he saw the thing in the first place, I’ll never know. It was light brown in color with a leg span that could only have straddled a dime. Perhaps my husband is possessed of x-ray vision or something; that would explain the sly grins he sometimes gives me when I am covered head to toe in a sweat suit. At any rate, once his eyes caught sight of that spider they weren’t letting it go.

Unfortunately, following the weaving path of a spider and attempting to operate a motor vehicle at the same time is not easy. Or safe. Sean was so busy squirming from the touch of imaginary spiders and shrieking, “Do you see it? Do you see it? Where’d it go?” that the fact that the car didn’t go careening off of the side of the road is a miracle. It really is.

The eight-legged beast would occasionally wander over to my side of the windshield. When my husband received news that his adversary had traversed away from him he would sigh audibly, “Oh, okay.” As if to say that the world was a shinier, happier place now that his wife would be receiving the death-bite in his place. He can be so sweet sometimes.

I’ll put a stop to this nonsense, I thought to myself. I clutched the church bulletin in my hand and resolved to nudge the spider out of the window with it. I had maintained the hope that once close enough to the open window the spider would be whisked away on the wind, never to be seen or heard from again. Much to my chagrin, instead of being sucked out of the vehicle into oblivion, the wind blew the spider back into the car.

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.

Rule #1: Bugs Belong Outside

My husband thought it would be a good idea to bring a salamander into the living room. I admit I have always thought salamanders to be cute little buggers, but not inside where they could leap from a person’s hand to dart under the living room furniture where they would be lost forever until turning up on the bed pillow all snuggly and curled up next to one’s head. I mean really, there are limits and rules about where one can handle these types of creatures. At least there should be.















I would like to say a word about the dreaded stinkbug. It seems that as soon as the weather begins to get warm they manage to find their way into the house. There haven’t been many yet this spring; the new windows appear to be reducing the number that actually penetrates the living space. While my girlfriend and I were at the park the other day she was telling me a story about how she woke up one night to find a stinkbug pattering around on her lips. She thought it was a hair and when she went to brush it away she realized, to her horror, that it was not a hair.

As I was getting myself ready for bed on Friday night I came across one of the cats staring at the moulding near the bathroom door. This posture typically means that he is watching a bug; sure enough, I followed his gaze right to the culprit. I grabbed a piece of toilet paper and proceeded to seize the stinkbug. Alas, my bit of toilet paper was not large enough and the imposter flitted away before I could acquire a good death-grip.

I searched and looked and even squinted in every corner looking for that stinkbug. I even tried to get the cat re-interested in the game, but he quit on me and went to lie down in a nice comfy chair somewhere. At the urging of my bladder I finally gave up and went into the bathroom. Whilst enjoying the liberty of being able to relieve myself without an audience, I felt a string tickling my right upper arm.

First, I remembered that my shirt had no loose strings, and very quickly after that I recalled my friend relating the feel of a stinkbug’s feet to a tickly hair. I cringed and slowly turned my head to peak down at my arm. Of course I did what any in-control person would do when discovering a disgusting bug crawling on their body: I flicked that thing off my arm to land wherever it may.

Thankfully, it landed in the white cast-iron tub so I didn’t have to go back to my fruitless search. I’m sure it got quite a laugh sitting on my shoulder while I searched high and low for its new perch. If you live in a house prone to stinkbugs beware the crawling tickly hair on your face that wakes you up in the middle of the night, it might try to crawl up your nose.

Hey, Your Sand is Touching My Spider

We continued to enjoy the unseasonably warm weather by spending the afternoon at Nana’s house. Nana has a nice big yard and a sandbox. The sandbox has a lid, but we learned that the lid being in place does not stop small spiders from seeking refuge in the warm un-freezable sand. Nana had exiled close to a dozen of them before I had to go inside to tend to the baby. Another note to sandbox-owning readers: after a nice summer rain don’t mistake those little flat black things in the sand for twigs; they are actually dried out worms that crawled in under the lid during the rainfall. Worms do not survive as well in the sand as do spiders.

The dance of death

It is with much confidence I say that God was in a particularly humorous mood the day he created my husband. While there are so many things that I can relate to reinforce my claim, today I will focus on just one.

The man loves the outdoors. He revels in hiking and camping. He enjoys working in the garden. As much as I love flowers and gardens, I am not one for the actual planting part unless I have gloves on. The reason being that there are so many frighteningly strange things that live in dirt. Living creatures that never see the light of day tend to look like something straight out of a Stephen King story. Not to mention the worms and beetles and stuff. None of this gets Sean ruffled (now if he sees a bee that’s another thing altogether as he was attacked by some wasps while fetching his ball from their nest as a child). Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are usually bugs involved when hiking or camping as well.

This morning while my son and I were at breakfast a rather stricken looking Sean appeared in the dining room to announce that a house centipede had made a wrong turn somewhere and had ended up in our bathroom. I can’t help but start to giggle at this bit of info because I know what’s going to happen. In my husband’s world bugs become a totally different entity once they cross the threshold into our home. Outside he can touch them, kill them, or pretty much ignore them; inside they become an instrument of extreme fear and loathing. And shrieking. Lots of shrieking. The difference between my husband and me is that I pretty much dislike bugs anywhere I find them. However, I am usually able to maintain my cool when dealing with them.

So off we go, into the bathroom where the scary bug is. The poor thing is huddled in the shadow of the doorframe because house centipedes are like allergic to light or something. As soon as he sees it, Sean turns into a nervous wreck; he starts to squirm and ask in a whiny voice what should be done to get rid of this disgusting invader. And then comes the aforementioned shrieking because he feels bugs crawling on him. Now, in all fairness to the poor man house centipedes are exceedingly horrid: they have what are the equivalent of knees joints because their legs are so long.

The tricky thing with these insects is that they are fast. So one can’t blink when the time comes to duel to the death. (Luckily Sean has yet to be killed by one of these monsters, although a few have escaped from his clutches). Not able to think of anything else, I suggest that he knock it onto the floor and smack it with a shoe (while I stand there and offer moral support). I hand him the shoe which he slips onto his right foot for extra accuracy. With a folded up napkin he swats at the enemy, knocks it onto the floor, and proceeds to stomp on it while screaming some sort of karate-sounding syllables. At this I can’t help but loose my composure and start to chortle uncontrollably.

Ah, yes. It is something to see a tall, muscular, brave sort of man lose his nerve at the sight of a bug indoors. Bring on the gross and graphic zombie movies, but leave the insects outside please. In the end, I believe it is the shrieking, screaming, and karate moves that really finishes off those bugs. I suppose that’s why my knight wears that shining armor- to keep the ants out of his pants. God love him: I know I do.