Not Mutual Respect

Not Mutual Respect

Okay, I’m not arachnophobic. The thing is, I just don’t like spiders. Actually, they scare hell out of me. It’s a well-known fact that in one evening of unconsciousness, a single colony of spiders can devour a man. At least the spiders that skitter across my sleeping mind can do that.

I woke up one evening, from a dead sleep, and in the dark of night, a spider the size of my hand was lowering itself down to my bed, from the ceiling.

I screamed. Like a little girl, I screamed, and when the lights were switched on, he had made his escape. I’m not convinced that the spider was a figment of my dreaming mind; I think it just got away before it could be caught and identified.

Our bathroom–the one I most commonly use–is a spider sanctuary. One recently climbed out of the overflow drain on my sink–while I was washing my hands no less. This thing appeared to have been bred in the Brazilian Rain Forest, and it fought for survival like it had been wronged by me in a past life. With large quantities of water, I was able to wash it down the drain. To prevent this larger relative of Itsy Bitsy from climbing back up the water spout, I turned on scalding hot water and ran that down the drain until the water heater was probably empty.

I took a roll of toilet tissue out of our decorative toilet paper storage basket–this was just this evening–and two spiders (one black, one brown), climbed off of the role and tried to climb onto my hand. I wasn’t able to kill either one, but the fact that I tried means that they now have a personal vendetta against me.

This is summer, and I live in the high desert of California. We have spiders. It’s a fact of life. But I even had a Black Widow in my car the other day. How does that happen? I went to great trouble to spray much of my car interior with a very potent spider poison. I’m not yet convinced though, that it’s a spider-free zone.

I’m a person who develops clutter. Some would call me a pack-rat, while others would simply call me a slob. Either way, I’m afraid to put my hands into the clutter to straighten it up, because I know it’s probably spider breeding grounds by now.

Like I said, I’m not arachnophobic, but spiders and I have a mutual respect for one another. When I think of it though, I’m the only one doing the respecting. If there is an area in which I know they frequent, I leave them alone, but those little buggars don’t honor my space. They actually come looking for me.

When all is said and done, the little eight-legged fiends are probably just trying to keep me nervous and a little off-balance. To date, their efforts are working.