It seems nature is not without a sense of irony. I’ve recently been having pest control issues here at home, with the house starting to resemble an unholy plague of flying minibeasts… Nature’s answer? More bugs.
Now I wouldn’t say I was particularly arachnophobia but I do detest spiders. There’s just something inherently evil about everything they do. Even just sitting there, pretending to mind their own business (they’re really spying to see when they can make their move on me) there is an air of contempt emitting from them.
Spiderman is a completely unrealistic character, even for a comic book… If he was part spider, he would spend 99% of his time looking for me and lurking just in my peripheral vision.
If one comes at me, no doubt looking for a fight, I’ll show it the business end of a slipper/book/DVD case/cat/etc without hesitation or even that much cowering. The cowing factor really does depend on a couple of factors: their velocity relative to me and their size. Let me show you a to-scale picture of the spider that attacked me today, spurring this post:
Okay… I’m exaggerating a little… It was only about the size of a car. Still not coming with me on this one? Fine… But it was a couple of inches long. And it was big and hairy and highly menacing…
Oh holy crap… I’m a wuss!
Anyway the thought of hitting this with something made me a little weary. Questions like ‘Eww it’s going to crunch’ and ‘Yuck, it’s going to make a big splat’ all the way through ‘What if it sees me coming for it and pre-empts me?’… I kid you not when I say this beast looked like it could easily have been hiding a knife in one of its boots.
I therefore settled on the tried and tested method of a lighter and an aerosol can of the antiperspirant variety. However, what the picture didn’t show you (because I was being girly, no doubt, using the camera’s zoom and keeping well back) was the amount of hair this thing was packing.
I believe I’ve already mentioned how flittish I am around spiders, so witnessing the spider go from ‘I have come to this country to have sex with your family’ to ‘Fuck, I’m on fire, on the floor and I know where you life, bitch’ was obviously slightly distressing and caused much aforementioned cowerage.
Now I know spiders fulfil an important role in ecology but they really don’t need to do it in my house, on my pillow or anywhere near me. I’ve never, in almost 23 years of living gone: ‘I could really do with a great big spider right about now’. I can deal with the flies. The only issue are the ones they get in my screens and even then I’m finding that they’re not permanent.
If we look at my track record, I have a pretty unbeaten record when it comes to spiders but I’d like to keep it that way and the best route to achieve this has to be never meeting another one. Is there not some sort of spray on pheromone that I can cover the house with that give any would-be intruding arachnid the chemical finger?
I should mention that the spider I’ve been talking about is not confirmed dead. After its express de-hairing it scuttled off under my bed and I can no longer find it. I was about five miles away at this point so I didn’t have much opportunity to stop it but now I have to sleep knowing that there is now a n eight-legged skinhead plotting my demise.
And I know it’s the type to crawl into my mouth while I sleep in a kamikaze move to scar my fragile mind for life. Bastard. Night night and god bless. Wish me luck.
Edit: I’ve just been thinking: instead of spiders invading our privacy couldn’t we have kittens? I would be much less offended turning round to see Ceiling-Cat…
