Spiders Galore

A couple of months ago I was in my back yard in one of my two utility closets. As I opened the door to walk in, a very large spider dangled in front of me. A large spider with a red hourglass on her belly.

For those of you who don’t know, I have a spider phobia. A justifiable spider phobia. When I was about twelve, living as a Navy brat on the NCT Annex in Orlando Florida we used to play “Potato Wars” in the wilderness surrounding the base.

On one especially hot Florida day I was immersed in a terrific Potato War unexpectedly. I was walking through a new stretch of the woods when friends (and bullies – why they formed an alliance on this day I’ll never know) jumped out of the underbrush and I was assaulted by a number of hard, vegatative, missiles.

I ran. It was what I was supposed to do. It was expected of me. I took off like the hounds of hell were on my heels, looking side to side for that tell-tell heavy-hanging branch that would indicate a potato I could pluck and use as a missile. I was so busy looking for a weapon that I neglected to watch where I was going. Until it was too late.

It’s amazing how fast the human body can stop from a full run when it needs to. At the first gossamer touch of web I stopped so fast that my clothes ran about three feet in front of me before they stopped – or so it seemed to me. It was too late, though.

I had run into a nest of Bannana Spiders. They looked like this:

In horror, I looked down and saw three of them crawling up my leg and one already in the center of my chest. I was paralyzed and couldn’t move. The little fukk3rs kept crawling all over me and when one actually touched my neck and chin, I freaked the fuck out.

I’m sure you can picture it – a twelve-year-old kid covered in monstrously-huge spiders, crying out, flapping his arms, and wildly smacking his arms across his body trying to dislodge the offending critters. Once I got them all off of me, I ran all the way home and although I don’t remember, I’m pretty sure I lay in the fetal position sucking my thumb for the remainder of the day.

So imagine my reaction when I saw the Brown Widow spider dangling in front of me. Not a Black Widow – but a slightly less poisonous cousin – the Brown Widow.

I screamed like a girl, slammed the utility door, and took off running. Strangely enough, I think I may have found a corner to lie fetal in and suck my thumb – but I won’t confirm that point unless forced to.

That was the end of that – I called my landlord, had him send out pest control, and breathed a sigh of relief. Until Saturday night.

I walked on my front porch and spotted not one, but SEVEN Brown Widow spiders on my porch. SEVEN of the little bastards. I had my kids with me so, although my legs were screaming for a fetal session and my thumb really wanted to be sucked – I knew I had to brave it out and rid my porch of these pests. I even managed to snap a few pictures of them:

As you can see, these were the real deal. So I killed them with Ant and Roach spray. Took them a LONG time to die and I swear they all crawled AT me once I poisoned their asses. Notice that last picture – the little shit had climbed a chair and was spinning a web to trap me in. It’s like they knew they were dead so they decided take out the white boy while they were still living.

I hid inside and peeked out at them as they died. I’m positive they got out a distress call though, and I’m now living in terror of waking up and having their little twiddlers waving in front of my eyes as the last thing I see before they get revenge….