Monday, October 10, 2016

Arachnophobia

Spiders and I have never been the best of friends.  In fact, even as I am writing this blog, there is one SuperHero that I am most definitely not a fan of, and that would be Spiderman.  Let me say, that I now have a precious granddaughter who is all caught up in the frenzy of Spiderman and even wants to be a "pretty Spidergirl" for Halloween.  That is an oxymoron.  Bless her sweet soul!  I just try to avoid the subject because I do not want to put my fears in her, even though I believe my fears to be quite justified.  This fear of spiders even carried over long before I even knew there was a Spiderman.  There is a nursery rhyme about The Itsy Bitsy Spider.  Quite frankly, I would be happy to see the rain just drown that spider.  Why stop at washing him out of the water spout?

Truly, I believe my fears to be quite justified, as I was bitten while minding my own business...sleeping in the middle of the night.  So much for the good old saying of spiders won't bother you if you don't bother them.  HA!   When I woke up, there was a place on my forehead that was itching.  I touched it and quickly ran to a mirror to see what the problem was.  I had a large red welt that itched like crazy and hole puncture wounds in the middle of it all. I assumed these were the actual bite spots.  Luckily, I was going to the doctor that afternoon for another reason, so I could get a medical opinion. Good for him to see it, just to let me know if I need to do anything special about it.  He told me that Benadryl spray, gel, and tablets would work.  In just a couple of days the anger of the bite went away, however, now, three months later, the scar of the bite is still there, slowly fading.

Immediately, I called our pest control company out to spray.  Also, he set up little sticky traps all around our home.  Every once in a while a little spider was in one and a larger spider in another one. Nothing much, so I was beginning to stop with the irrational fear of closing my eyes at night to sleep.  

Then, we went away on our vacation for one week.  When we returned all of the sticky traps were loaded with all kinds of spiders. One even looking like a brown recluse spider stuck in the glue.  All dead, of course. When I see a spider, no matter how small, I just want him dead.  Preferably, I would use the weapon at the top of this blog.  Knowing that is impossible, if I want our home still standing, I usually take a shoe and smash the hell out of it.  Then, there is no way of identifying what kind of spider I killed.  At least it is dead.  Another big problem is not so much seeing the spider, as it is the fact that the spider disappeared before I could kill it.  My thought is that now it is off plotting my demise for a secret attack in my sleep. Besides smushing it with a shoe, one of the next best ways to kill it is to spray it with a can of hair spray.  It may not die immediately, however, it will stop running because the hairspray freezes his 8 legs so no movement is possible; just like the hair on your head if you spray too much.  I assure you that I have no problem using the whole can to freeze his legs, as well as to asphyxiate him.

My rational thought process came up momentarily and I started asking myself, exactly what good are spiders?  Oh my!  I read that they are perfect pest control creatures.  What?  They are the pests.  I am paying good money to get rid of these pests.  A story came to my mind about someone that I worked with coming in with a totally swollen closed eye.  It was a spider bite that caused it.  She actually stood there to tell me that she did not kill spiders in her house because they get rid of other bugs.  This left me speechless. Really? She was in misery and had to wear an eye patch over her eye for three weeks. This to me was as insane as another person telling me that she tried to catch the spiders in her house when she found them and took them outside so that they could live. Right...live to come right back in her home again.  

Just a couple of other interesting facts that I managed to gather in searching about what is good about a spider:

  • there are 40,000 different species of spiders in the world (and none apparently are on any endangered list)
  • spiders have 6 - 8 eyes (so they can always see you)
  • the female black widow spider will eat her mate after sex
  • there is a common spider that tends to jump small steps when they move around
  • good to know that there are no flying spiders
These bullet points highlight how there really are no positive aspects when it comes to spiders.  Let me end this blog by saying that I found a little poem while researching:

Nice spider.
Let me pet you with my foot.
Nice spider.  Dead spider!





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