Hello, Mother Nature

I am not overly fond of spiders, and if they are very large, will actually try to catch and then release them outside. Smaller spiders are asked to leave, and if they do not vacate the bedroom immediately are immediately squished. Yes, I have conversations with critters that do not belong in my bedroom...

big spider 2

I find spiders fascinating, but not in my bedroom. There are different responses to finding a large spider in my bedroom. If I find a large spider in my bedroom, and the spider is too close to my face, my first reaction is to yelp. That is usually not very useful in making the spider go away, so I then take a really hard look at the big spider.

Depending on how large the spider is depends on my next set of reactions. If the spider is large, but not as big as a silver dollar I would usually bounce around the room hoping I might accidentally step on the spider. Usually that doesn't work too well because the spider is more times than not on either the wall or ceiling. The next step I take is the then stop, take stock of what type of footwear I am wearing, and decide if the footwear would be appropriate for squishing the large spider to kingdom come. If I do not have the proper footwear that can be used, then I rush around the bedroom looking for an appropriate squishing device while keeping a wary eye on that blasted spider.

Once an appropriate squishing device has been located, I go into action. I will strive to squish the spider without embedding it into the wall or ceiling. This usually doesn't work well because if I don't hit it hard enough, the spider doesn't die. Then I smack it until it turns into a dark spot on the painted wall.

Again, depending on the type of spider (if it is poisonous or not), I may just be brave enough to grab a glass and a piece of cardboard so that I can catch and release the spider back into the cruel wide world outside of the house. This also the technique I would use for spiders larger than a silver dollar (unless they are larger than a breadbox).

Now if I get a multi-legged creature in my bedroom, or any other room of the house that is bigger than a bread box, what I have done in the past has been to go to bed and hope it goes away. (Yes, I really did that...I had a millipede in the house that was longer than my shoes and easily as thick around as my thumb). I ended up crawling into bed and hoping it wouldn't crawl in with me. Days later I found a dead millipede in another part of the house.

The reason I didn't kill the millipede was that I didn't have anything big enough to kill it with. I don't believe in killing half of a creature, and there really was nothing I had that would kill the whole millipede. I didn't even have a container that would have held that sucker. I am forever grateful for all the residual bug spray along the baseboards of my home, because I suspect that was the ultimate downfall of the millipede.

In a nutshell, I do not like spiders or scorpions for that matter but really don't like to squish them. Scorpions get squished all the time, but I will try to save most spiders and put them back outside. If I think I have a brown recluse in the house though, that sucker gets squished. Actually, I still have the remains of a squished brown recluse on the wall of my closet as a warning to other spiders to stay away. Since I have seen no other signs of spiders, I hope my warning worked.

Hopefully we will not see any spiders the remainder of this year (yeah, a whole 10 days).

Until tomorrow...