My Spidey Sense

I hate spiders. Hate them with a passion fueled by the equivalent of a thousand suns. They freak me out something fierce. My general rule for spiders is that any spider under the size of the quarter is a creepy nuisance that I will dispatch accordingly. Any spider larger than quarter size is best left to my husband because otherwise I will not be able to sleep. True story. Because of my arachnophobia, we’ve had exterminator service every three months for the entire time we’ve lived in our current house. I don’t want to take any chances. You see, because our home is adjacent to open space, we often have large, prey-hunting wolf spiders hanging around. And, oh, how I hate they.

What makes matters worse for me when it comes to arachnids is that I seem to have a sixth sense for spotting them. It’s like my own personal spidey sense. If there is one anywhere in the garage or the yard or on the porch, I will spot it. You know how a dog or cat will gravitate toward the one person in the room who is most allergic? Spiders are like that with me. They love me. They seek me out simply to torture me. This just makes me hate them more.

Today after I pulled the car into the garage and came around the other side, I spied a large wolf spider. Seriously? It’s MARCH! Wolf spiders already? Ugh. It’s gonna be a long summer. If Steve had been home, I would have sicked him on it but he was not. I thought about it for a while and decided I could not knowingly let it stay in the garage. So, I picked up a shovel and not wanting to leave a mess I would have to hose down or forever stare at I tossed him out into the yard. But, that wasn’t good enough. I knew he would come back. So, I took that shovel and beat that ugly, eight-legged alien until I was certain it would not ever crawl again. Then, I calmly replaced the shovel in its usual spot, walked up the stairs into the house, and then slammed and bolted the door and let out a shudder and a squeal that I’m certain measured on the Richter scale. Did you feel it?

Last spring I knowingly and willingly let a tarantula crawl across my hand in an attempt to overcome my aversion to spiders. Today I found out it did not work. Calling the exterminator again tomorrow for a repeat spraying of noxious chemicals, which they assure me will not actually kill the wolf spiders (only a shovel can do that, apparently) but at least the spiders “don’t like it.” At this point, I’m willing to settle for something the spiders don’t like because the day I find one of those wolf spiders in my home is the day we move to Alaska. And, you should know that I hate the cold almost as much as I hate spiders.