Thursday, December 16, 2010

Spiders are like little pieces of death wrapped in scary

My friend Julie introduced me to this blog called Hyperbole And A Half.

Check out this one on spiders (from whence the title of this blog post was taken.) If you're easily offended by f-bombs, don't go there and you probably won't want to visit Canada, because most of us are pretty relaxed with this word. I can't speak for every Canuck, but my circle of friends and colleagues certainly are. I think it's the hockey.

So if, like me, you are terrified of spiders despite all the logic your brain and your husband lobs at you, you will find this blog post funny. My husband tries to make me feel guilty by explaining that not only am I being silly for being afraid, I have now passed this "irrational" fear on to my daughters and I should be ashamed of myself, as a mother.

Bah, I said, the last time he chastised me. And then I directed him HERE where a recent article suggests a genetic component to our fear of spiders. That women are born this way, in order to protect their young. Ha. I posted this article on my fridge for a while to drive home my point, but the spider photo gave me the willies.

I can't count on my husband to kill any eight-legged interlopers in the house either (and they almost always choose our upstairs bathroom) because putting aside his view that spiders are not to be feared and should actually be protected because they're beneficial, his arachnid modus operandi goes like this:

He approaches very slowly, usually without benefit of his glasses, while holding a tissue like an old woman on a cruise ship waving goodbye to her cronies on the dock. The whole time he's approaching the spider, he's looking at me and delivering the same lecture about how silly I am. When he finally gets to the creature, he'll make a half-hearted swipe. One of two things always happens.

1. He misses the spider entirely. This results in it rappelling down the wall and skittering behind the toilet, bent on revenge which I know is going to happen at 2 a.m., in the dark, while I'm alone, with my underwear around my ankles rendering me unable to run. Or I'll forget about the underpants, run, fall, knock myself out and will lie there helpless until it crawls in my ear and makes babies.

2. He captures it but doesn't crush it in the tissue. He'll then shake it into the toilet bowl where it skitters on the floating tissue and escapes before we can flush.

This is why I keep a vacuum cleaner with a long attachment near the upstairs bathroom at all times. Over my lifetime I've probably vacuumed more spiders than dust or pet hair. (Probably? Okay, definitely.)

More recently, my car was the scene of a spider carnage. As I was leaning in to unpack the trunk of my car alongside my sister at her house in Toronto, I noticed movement at the corner of my eye. Literally, at the corner of my eye. A large wolf spider, a stowaway, was inching its way past my face. I screamed, and its legs shot straight out as it continued its descent, making it seem even more demonic. My sister got all huffy because I'd screamed, then she saw it and went batshit crazy. She had her shoe off in a micro-second screaming "KILL IT KILL IT" so I gave it a whack and splattered it, and all ten thousand of its orange babies, all over my trunk.

In case you want a visual, just Google what a wolf spider looks like. (I can't even bring myself to post a photo.) They're big. Especially when they're filled with spider caviar. They're described as "robust and agile hunters with good eyesight." Just reading that makes me feel woozy.

If you prefer, there's one on dogs.

This one on her dogs which had me doubled over laughing. And there were no spiders in it. Not one.

5 comments:

Julie K said...

I am so glad Allie inspired your post. I laughed until I had tears in my eyes - and yours and hers :)

A Novel Woman said...

She is SO funny. Love her little cartoons, with the wonky eyes. LOVE her. And you, of course.

Debby said...

I loved the dog one. The spider one, well, I just took a miss on it. I'm not skeerd of spiders. I just don't much like 'em. That's different, you know.

Lottery Girl said...

OMGosh! I laughed my butt off at your wonderful post! The description of your spouse is priceless!

I am a good mom... most of the time. Well, there was the time when we had carolina wolf spiders invade the house (in Florida, of course) and they, as in three or four a time, loved to run across the ceiling at the speed of light. I convinced my son to kill them with a cue stick while we girls screamed!

Otherwise, I'm a good mom. I took care of the dog-sized roaches in Texas, and the snakes in Florida, the mountain lions in Colorado, etc.

Yutha said...

Can't.....breathe....I'd forgotten about that spider in your car and actually shuddered while reading about it again. nah, nah, nah, nah, didn't happen, didn't happen!

Dave does EXACTLY the same thing when he kills spiders for us. He gently tries to trap it (trap it!!!) so he can flush it because he doesn't want to stain the wall with spider guts. EVERY time it skitters away with Leah and I screaming "smash it, SMASH IT!", Dave yelling "stop yelling!", then calmly grabbing it from the floor or wherever its fallen, flushes it and says "see? no big deal!". He also blames me for giving Leah my "irrational fear". Maybe I'll put a snake in his bed and see how HE likes it. Oh, wait a minute.....
(word verification is "hedeadm"....hmmmm.....