Spiders

Summer is filled with bounty from the garden and the property is teeming with life. Especially eight-legged life. Last night I came home from a very long (but fun) day at the winery to find a large grass spider sitting in the center of the bathroom on the tile.  In case you've never seen a grass spider, they look like this (photo courtesy Google). If you can imagine this guy staring you down as you came in to grab a nice shower after a long day's work, you can probably also understand why I elected to remain stinky and vacate the master bath immediately. 

I don't mind spiders, but in their place. Which is not taking an aggressive stance on my bathroom tile.

Grass Spider

I used to put these guys back outside until I realized they LIKE being indoors and would usually make their way back in within 24 hours (I know this because one was missing one leg and I had to put him out twice before finally deciding to kill him so he didn't make any more attempts. I make no apologies.  Find one of these guys on your pillow as you're getting ready for bed and you will totally understand). 

So Big Ag did the manly man thing and dispatched the latest trespasser for me.

A little rattled after my close encounter, I decided to waste yet another evening of my life by browsing Facebook, when I noticed a large black sock on the carpet next to me. And right as I was about to scold Big Ag about 1) leaving his socks around and 2) wearing black socks in summer, the sock moved...slowly. 

I took a closer look and realized it was a massive tarantula.  Here he is attempting to hide from the camera, which I grabbed in between screaming fits.

Of course my screams brought Big Ag running into the room just as I was running out of it. Entering Hero Mode once again, he gently scooped the big tarantula into a mixing bowl and we took it down into the pasture and set it free. But not before it scurried around a lot as he was trying to get it into the bowl, sending me out of the room with more screams.

At that point I should have just taken a xanax and called it a night. A fright night.

Instead, I took a peek on the patio, and on the outside of the screen noticed an extremely large beetle hanging a couple of feet up. Again, I called Big Ag and he tapped on the screen and the "beetle" fell, only it was not a beetle but rather another tarantula -- a baby this time -- which began walking away. 

Obviously at this point I've realized it's going to be a banner year for the tarantulas, and within a couple of months I'm sure they will taking over my house, garden and blog, so look forward to future episodes from the Hot Tarantula Homestead.

Anyway, this sordid tale continues. As I'm checking to make sure Baby Tarantula is making his way away from the house, I notice a massive black widow building a web around the entrance to the dog house. Now you may hang out on my library carpet or in my master bathroom, dear spider, but if you are a poisonous spider, if you fuck with anything near my dog, I will become your merciless and swift Angel of Death -- no more screaming at this point; we're done with that shit -- I will spray, step or swat you into the Kingdom of Wherever Spiders Go After Death (hopefully not the same place we're going).

After that, I'd had enough. Even Big Ag's previously-recorded Deadliest Catch episodes couldn't convince me to stay up.  Besides, crabs look an awful lot like.....well, you know. Spiders. There's no way I was going to watch that after my evening. I checked myself into bed (after inspecting the carpet, bid skirt, sheets, pillows and duvet carefully for interlopers) and called it a night. 

Spider Philosophy

Spring has brought with it house guests, some invited, some not.  Under the category of the "not invited" are those of the eight-legged kind, also known as spiders.  Right now the ones I see most are smallish and tend to be found on the tile floors in our bathrooms.  Their parents hang out (literally) on the porch overhang and are at least 1 - 2 inches long.

We also see the occasional tarantula outside, but they are harmless and are therefore not a threat of any kind. 

But while these spiders are harmless, the Black Widows found in the garage and around the property are not.  They are dispatched quickly using a shoe or can of Raid.  I make no apologies for that, if it can harm me, my family or my livestock, it can't stay around.

But it's what we do with the harmless house spiders that interests me. Unless there is a substantial risk that the spider will escape and be lost, say, somewhere in back of my bedroom headboard (where, in my fantasies, it will wait until I'm sleeping to crawl on my face), my usual method of control is a mason jar and page from a magazine.  I place the jar over the spider, run the magazine page underneath it, and place said spider safely outside where it can continue doing what God intended it to do -- killing other bugs.  If the weather is cold and makes them unable to fly, I've even been known to do this with house flies.  Perhaps I was a buddhist in a former life.

I learned all this at my mother's knee.  I believe she was the one who taught me, at a tender age, to value all life, in all its forms.  And yet now I wonder if I memories are correct, because the last time she was here and saw me capturing a spider to place it back outside, she informed me that, wherever she found spiders, she would smash them to a pulp, then and there.

I can't help but wonder what changed my mother's outlook regarding the wild creatures she taught me to respect and love.  Or maybe I over-estimated her love for them and she merely tolerated my own respect of their right to live. To some extent, I know it was a mindset I was born with, like having blonde hair or green eyes.  Perhaps my mom was only humoring me when I was a child.

I'll never know for sure, but as long as I'm alive, I hope I have a mason jar option for everything that I don't want in my life.  Contain its influence and remove it to a place where it can't possibly hurt you.  Then let it live out its life in peace, as you do yours.