Well I had to kill it. There was no way I could go to bed and leave THIS THING intact and in robust health to wander freely and horridly about the house, crawling its inevitable way from the livingroom down the hallway to the bedroom, up the bedspread and to my neck. I already have two white spots on my neck where the venom from a previous spider bite wiped out my skin's pigmentation.
But that spider had been a quarter of the size of this spider. Imagine what a bite from this sucker feels like. No, don't.
I had convinced myself this was a wolf spider, when it first crawled out to greet me while I was working on the computer, and that was the more rosy-colored view. The alternative view that I could not entertain until long after his spindly legs had been obliterated, never to unfold again....was that he was a brown recluse.
Spider identification is nasty business. It requires looking at numerous images of spiders to see how "my" spider compares to the most objectionable ones. Which puts me in the crazy position of hoping it's a wolf spider. Instead of a brown recluse.
I'm forced to contemplate his horrible legs...imagine, wishing a spider's legs were hairier...and that repulsive little body....of course it takes on a violin-shape, once the suggestion has been planted.
But my post-mortem of the spider is a flawed affair beset by cringing and retching. Spider-identifiers of the world, what do you see?
Even though he was dead, one spider raises the unsettling promise of more to come. Where did he drag his wretched little body from? Was there a nest? The skin positively crawls.
Killing him hadn't been easy. He was heinously visible, but hard to get to. It's like he knew I needed a clear shot and a space wide enough to let me WHAPP! that shoe against his body. I finally had to move the computer table to get to him.
After I pulled out the computer table, is when I saw it, and my heart sank even further. Oh no. Crap, I thought. I really need to dust.
Spiders! I try to live in peace with them as they are good for keeping other, more aggravating critters, under control. But, when faced with no alternative, I'm not inclined to pick them up and put them outside. They generally just die. (murder or justifiable self-defense?)
ReplyDeleteActually, they are pretty unlucky and get a bad rap. I think its the legs. There are too many. I mean, if you were to get rid of a couple of those legs, shorten them up and slap some wings on them, they could become a beautiful, harmless butterfly...(that shoots ropes out they butt}.
Kind of like a cute, bushy-tailed little squirrel. Un-bush that tail and they become a creepy little tree rat. Or, a cute little mouse scurrying around. Bigger ears and a couple of wings and it turns into Dracula. Or a duck. Take that funny little mouth and feet off, slap it on a beaver and, BOOM!...a freaky (somewhat scary) Australian marsupial.
There are a lot of critters that walk that fine line between cute and scary.
This true! And what a mad scientist you would be if Mother Nature handed the keys over to you! But yes, spider legs! Who thought this was a good idea?
ReplyDeleteWhy is that thing still milling about in the winter?! Get gone!!
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