Afraid of Spiders? Me? Ha! I eat them for dessert!

-Warning- long post. grab a cup o' tea and some crumpets, you'll be here a while.

As some of you know, I have moved into my parents basement after my little sister took over my room when I left for the mission. This is an unfinished basement mind you. As in Cement wall, old carpet, wood frame ceiling, no AC or heat, and the massive infestation of bugs, primarily the common household spider. Now, I don't know if the frequent explosions at Hercules up the street has left some kind of radiation or nuclear contamination in the ground or what. But our spiders (The Hodgson spiders as I lovingly call them) are abnormally huge and frightening to encounter, let alone look at. They are quite daring for spiders as well. Normally these creatures are in the typical mindset of,"They are more afraid of you than you are of them." But not the Hodgson spiders. They thrive off of human contact. One person who may have the ability to scare them in our house is my mother. If she even thinks she see's a spider, she does the scream of death. Meaning, she screams to the point of our whole family thinking she's being stabbed to death by a serial killer. We've all gotten quite used to it and it has become the comical event of our week.

The past week I've had several (make that 4 to be exact) experiences, if you will, with a whole company of Hodgson spiders and every other species that creepeth and crawleth on the earth.

Episode 1: I was blogging away and listening to my itunes with Rachel next to me chatting about the day. I saw a bit of movement out of the corner of my eye, look to wall next to me, and there is this larger-than-a-quarter dark brown spider slowly creeping up my wall. I calmly yet with the sound of urgency said to Rachel, "Get me a shoe NOW" she sort of jumped and yelled, "WHY?!?!" and when she saw what I was staring at, she grabbed one of my flip flops and threw it at me. Now you have to understand the anatomy of Hodgson spiders. They need a very heavy, hard impact blunt crush of their bodies or they just get a little phased and hop right back up. It's like their exo-skeleton was made to survive slight crushings now and agian. From the size of this spider and the color (seems the darker they are, the more creepy they are and higher a crush rebound rate compared to lighter colored spiders) I knew it would survive a flip flop smash because of the angle I would hit it on the wall wouldn't give enough force. I yelled at Rachel again to get me a shoe this time. A sneaker or boot that would kill it. She just had to hand me my new, white Adidas 2G sneakers. I had no choice but to use them and kill the spider as he was getting closer to dissapearing into the ceiling. BAM!!!!! I got him good an hard and of course he stuck to my shoe, guts splattered and legs protruding upwards at me. His one last attempt to gross me out even though he was dead. So, I go upstairs, flush him down the toilet and proceed to disinfect my shoe. At the time I thought it wasn't so bad as this was the first spider I had encountered since moving into my room 2 weeks ago. Well little did I know this was the first of my four adrenaline rushes for the week.

Episiode 2: we see Rachel and Rebecca talking about how to paint their rooms as they are both in the middle of remodeling. Rachel lays on Rebecca's bed, two second pause, she looks to her left and staring her in the face is a another 2" diameter spider. Probably the cousin of spider #1 coming to avenge the death of his relative. Rachel being a scared girly girl, screams ,"A SPIDER!!!" Of course their is nothing nearby to kill the spider, so she backs away in fright expecting Rebecca to kill the vermin. Rebecca searches the room and what else is closer to grab to kill he speedily running away spider? Her new Adidas 2G sneaker still out from the night before's spider killing. What else. So, Rebecca grabs the shoe and starts smacking the spider as it's running at a flash speed to get off the bed. I say smackING in plural because the bed is soft and as we discussed earlier you need a blunt impact to kill these beasts. So the spider recovers after each smack of the shoe and keeps running for his life to the edge of the bed. Finally after the 5th hit the thing is dead. Of course he couldn't die without leaving some kind of grossing out ritual after time of death. In the case of Spider #1, he left guts on my beloved shoe with the legs reaching out to grab me. In this instance Spider #2 not only chooses my bed which I will be haunted to sleep in from now on, but he chooses to attack the exact day I put on my Brand, New, WHITE SHEETS which are now covered with random spots of his intestines. I guess I should be thankful that the shoe was lucky enough to somehow avoid gut coverage, and that Rachel was the one who encountered the spider(face to face) instead of myself. Accentuate the positive is what I always say.

Episode 3: All of my things are put away, my clothes are folded and I have a couple pieces of furniture to move back into place after some of the remodeling which required me to move things around. I have been at the cleaning and rearranging all day long with not a single spider skuttling by. I was getting a little too comfortable seeing how moving furniture is the most likely place for a spider to surface. I start moving my wooden chest towards the wall when a spider darts from underneath the chest at a breakneck speed towards my curtain. I think, "Great, I have him trapped." My curtains are longer than floor length so he was a little cornered and no where to go but towards me or up the curtain which was vertical. I quickly grab the nearest thing (take a wild guess. yes, my same shoe) turn around and he's gone. CRAP!! I coulnd't figure our where he dissapeared to. I stand up and he's at eye level crawling up the curtain. SMACK! he falls to the ground. Not a speck of guts on the curtain or the shoe. Man, I'm getting good at this. The worst part about spider extermination is the picking up of the body. To make sure he's dead, you have to crush him, and of course every time you happen to come upon a spider, their is no box of tissues around, no full roll of TP, but a single thin napkin or a couple squares of TP left on a roll. you can't leave the room to get more, because he could be faking and pop up as soon as you leave the room. You don't want to crush him again as you would get his insides embedded into the carpet and more guts on the precious shoe. You are forced to use the thin napkin. And as you pick up the limp body you crush and feel the little bones cracking between your fingers. A wave of nausea overtakes you as spider #3's last effort for the grossing out ritual is fulfilled.

Every night since spider #3 I have taken off all my bedding, shaken it violently and remade it before I will even sit on my bed. Spider #3 has scarred me for life I think.

Episode 4: Last night I started the "mural" of sorts I am doing on my wall.

Here's a quick pic of it about 40% finished.

I'm trying to make the most of the dull cement walls I've been cursed to live in. I didn't want to die off the fumes of the paint, so I set up a fan and opened my window to get some circulation through. Turns out I don't have a screen in my window, so I was forced to welcome in a family of moths and who knows what else in the two hours I had my window open. While I was finishing up painting for the night, I noticed a movement from the corner of my eye. It was flying, so I thought it was just a moth. A while later I saw it again and turned to make sure it wasn't some spider swinging from the ceiling. It was a freakishly huge half mosquito half yellow jacket insect with 2 inch dangly legs and a pointy stinger for it's rear end. I quickly grabbed a towel and whipped it. Of course it lands on my pillow (Are they all out to get my bed?) but I had my camera handy, so you're in for a treat!

If you look closely you can see his little head and the two beady little black eyes staring up at me. I don't know what the deal is, but this week has been the week for bugs to attack me. Although I have successfully killed all four Giants I encountered, that's a plus in the least.

I also have a quick 5 min video of a tour a la spider traps, but Blogger is having some issues with the video. I'll try posting it again later or tomorrow.

So onto a more happier note, I thought I'd end with some pictures of tonight's dinner. Ironically It was a member of the spider family. But it was DELISH! I love crab, especially king crab. They were having a sale at Smith's, so I picked up $13 worth of "Collossal King Crab" and my mom and I had a feast. This was THE biggest crab I've ever seen. I cooked it a little long which made it more chewy than usual, but it was still great.

Hope you all have a spider-free night and sleep well. Hopefully I haven't given you the creepy Crawlies :)

Bec