Spider!

The early mornings really are not for us. Still, out of necessity, I get up early in the mornings on weekdays to get the kids up and on their way for school. This doesn’t mean we jump out of bed and bounce around the house, getting dressed lickety-split and out the door in a flash. We’re usually pretty tired and just drudging through the motions. This morning, however, something happened that left me and Jennifer WIDE AWAKE. It also left me with my heart pounding in my chest long after it was over!

When it was time for Jennifer to go out to the couch to put on her shoes, etc., after she’d gotten dressed for school, I led her out of her bedroom and into the living room. As she walked away from me, I turned around to switch on the lamp. I turned back around to see Jennifer walk right into a HUGE black spider hanging from the ceiling!

I screamed and Jennifer jumped back. The spider that had been on her chest only a second ago flew off of her and around in a circle. We watched in horror as that big black spider just swung there from the ceiling and I was hoping we didn’t lose it, because I wanted to make sure we could kill it! (Sometimes I do catch and release spiders, insects and any critters that get into the house. Or I try to lure them out if I don’t want to get stung or bitten by them. But spiders are a different story! I usually kill spiders – especially the big scary kind! I’ve had to deal with way too many black widows and wolf spiders when I lived in the desert to catch and release all the spiders I find in my home. Well, except solpugids. Those were too cool to kill! We usually caught them and set them loose somewhere. Ditto with the walking sticks. ANYWAY!) To those who are against killing spiders, I just have to say that my mom instincts kicked in overdrive here. I had to protect my babies! Couldn’t let this spider live to get back into the house and bite the children! Or get anywhere NEAR them!

Once we made sure that the spider wasn’t going anywhere, Jennifer and I slooooowly backed away from it. Jennifer would NOT take her eyes off of it! She also flinched when she thought it moved. I was prepared to kill the thing myself but I was too scared to get too close to it. I DID take a picture of it, but even then I didn’t get too close!

So I told Jennifer to go wake up her dad. When he came out and saw the spider, he got closer and looked at it. Then he turned around and told me it was a ground spider. (I’d never seen one before, or heard of them.) He turned back around to examine it some more then used his shoe and a fly swatter to kill it with.

After all that excitement was over, I was still scared about the whole thing. I kept seeing Jennifer walk right into it!! It drove me crazy. Jennifer was still shaken up, too. We felt a little better after I looked it up on the Internet and learned that they are harmless to humans.

Here are two links I came up with. The second one has a more accurate image of the kind of spider in the living room:

Spiders in the Home
(Ours is Figure 3)

BugGuide

And here is the picture I took:

It's not a really good picture. The spider is on the right, its shadow on the wall is on the left.

Soon it was time to leave for the bus stop. At the bus stop, we were both still a little shakened up but we lightened the mood by remembering funny things in a movie we had watched last night. That actually helped us feel better.

But after I got back home, I did a big search of the house to make sure there weren’t any other spiders hiding somewhere. Or hanging around anywhere!

This definitely made me think I need to turn on the lights and check the rooms when I get up in the mornings. Sort of do a morning patrol to make sure everything is all clear. I don’t want another episode of one or both of the kids walking into anymore spiders – or being surprised in the early mornings by anything worse than a harmless spider!

My little hero

One thing that Jennifer takes pride in talking about is how she once "saved" me. When we were moving in, I was pulling a bookcase through a narrow area of my bedroom. I had the bookcase leaning towards me and was very carefully pulling it along. My foot got caught on something and I tripped, falling to the floor. I looked up to see the bookcase coming down towards me. I screeched and threw my hands out to block it from landing on me but immediately noticed it was going back up in the other direction!

Apparently, Jennifer, who was 4 at the time, had been close by and seen what happened. She ran into the room just in time to grab the bookcase and sit it back upright before it got anywhere near me. Never mind how amazed I was that she was so freaking STRONG enough to do that; my heart was racing that she'd actually come to my rescue! In between trying to catch my breath and waiting for my fear to fade away, I clutched my little girl against me and kept thanking her for helping me. I told her how strong she was and how she was my "hero" for "saving" me. (It may not be a big deal to other people, but having a bookcase fall on you isn't exactly a good thing!)

Well, today, Jennifer got a chance to be a hero again. This time, she saved her baby brother from getting bitten by a poisonous spider.

Today, I cleared away EVERYTHING on the floor in the living room -- toys, pillows, baby's blanket, TV dinner trays -- and did the sweeping and dusting to prepare for the vacuuming job. This is something I do lots of times, and I tend to notice the occasional penny on the carpet or a forgotten small toy car Jennifer left out. The little "hazards" to my crawling 9-month-old son, who will put anything into his mouth. This time, though, I hadn't noticed something that was another hazard. Jennifer had been the one to find it: A GIANT black spider against the wall, near the fireplace. I ran in one direction to get the flyswatter to kill it, the spider ran in the other direction to get away. I'd seen where it had gone: Behind the entertainment center.

Now cue the visual of me practically TEARING everything out of that entertainment center and AWAY from the wall as I frantically hunted for that beast.

After I cleared the stuff out and ended my search, I sat there, puzzled. WHERE had it gone?

Jennifer once again spotted it. She informed me that, during my attack on the poor entertainment center, the spider had gone the OTHER way, towards the fireplace.

"Did you see where it went?" I asked, almost out of breath from my rampage.

"There," Jennifer answered, fearfully pointing at a corner of where the wall and fireplace met. (This was a BIG spider we were dealing with! We're talking Charlotte's Web big!)

I looked but couldn't figure out where it could have gone. I didn't see a hole, or anything.

"Where, Jen?" I asked, confusedly studying the spot.

She got closer and pointed. That's when I saw it: A tiny crack in the wall, right next to the fireplace. Apparently, the spider had gotten into the house through there.

I gingerly tapped at the crack with the flyswatter, even though I couldn't see anything. I shrieked and Jennifer fell back as the spider came RUNNING out of that crack and charged right at me. It looked MAD! EEK!! I was fumbling first with the duster as I tried to keep it away from me then I grabbed the nearby flyswatter and, when it was on the bricks around the fireplace, I swatted at it. It took two swats to get it to stop moving. The danger thwarted, NOW I let out my fear and cried out. "Oh my God! That was a big spider!"

I went to the bathroom to get a thick bundle of toilet paper to pick the spider up with in order to give it a water funeral. I came back to where Jennifer had been inspecting the crushed arachnid, only for her to tell me that it wasn't dead! WHAT! THE! HECK! I got down on my knees to look at it, even though my instincts wanted me to RUN! I studied it and, sure enough, the spider's mouth with the sharp fangs (FANGS!!!) was going up and down. I let out an "eek!" and swatted it again as hard as I could. This time, it was ALL flat. (Note to self: Get a stronger flyswatter.)

But after THAT, there was noooo way I was gonna trust anything to pick that spider up with my hands. It was the spider from Hell! The spider that wouldn't die! So Jennifer suggested I use the toilet paper to scoop up the dead spider (and, yes, it WAS finally dead!) onto the flyswatter then carefully carry it to the bathroom to empty it into the toilet. So that's what we did. And I was glad to be rid of it!

I'll definitely be even more glad after we patch up that crack on the wall. I am NOT taking my chances of anything else getting in. And you can bet I'm going to be more attentive to any other cracks or holes that might appear where outside creatures can get in.

I told Jennifer she was a hero today. If she hadn't seen that spider, I wouldn't have destroyed it. And if I hadn't destroyed it, it could've bitten my baby boy. That spider definitely looked poisonous, or that a bite from it would really HURT. And an aggressive spider is never a good thing. So I'm glad that is not a threat anymore. Jennifer had saved her little brother today, without him even noticing it. Well, at least her mommy and, later, her daddy took notice. And we're proud of her for it.