Chemical warfare...

It's not something I like to admit--but I am TERRIFIED of spiders.

Especially ones big enough you can see their eight buggy eyes staring back at you, mocking you.

"You scared of me little girl?!? He he he."

You're damn right I'm scared of you arachnid. And with good reason.

(Now, I feel like I should preface the following by saying if they are little small spiders, the kind that tend to get into the house, I am not such a chicken. I smash them, flush them, and wash my hands about a thousand times. A good Buddhist, I will never make.)

Saturday, after a long day at work--and very (how sad--I had hopes) uneventful evening I come home to see a giant spider web in the door way leading up to my landing. No spider. "Well that's just disgusting" I said (out loud of course...I seem to have lost the ability for internal dialogue these days) and went up to get my broom to remove the offensive thing from the door frame. As I come down the stairs...I see it. It drops down to the middle of the web, turned it's head, saw me, and started to drop down a little further, like he wanted a better look.

And yes, I shrieked like a banshee and hightailed it back up the stairs almost in tears.

Okay. Go ahead. Have yourself a good laugh at my expense.

This thing was HUGE. A monster, really. I think it was about as big around as a half dollar (this is NOT including it's legs...)

Well--what happened next, I'm not proud of.

I keep a bottle of Ortho Home Defense right outside on my front porch. I spray around my light fixtures and such as it keeps moths and other stupid buggy type things away from my house. This stuff is simply amazing. It works for weeks at a time. Awesome, right? Right. So, I grab my bottle and before I lose my nerve, I run back down the stairs, bottle raised like a weapon and start spraying. It was like a scene out of Natural Born Killers and I was the one leading the massacre.

I sprayed at the spider dead (ha ha) center on its web--and he almost immediately fell to the ground. *Cough* *Hack* he seemed to be saying as he stumbled drunkenly around on the concrete. I kept spraying "Die! Why won't you just die!?"

I pleaded with him to give up. About two minutes of spraying later (Yes--overkill.I'm totally aware of this.), he did. And I was relieved.

Until I turned around and saw another big hairy monster glaring at my back.

Needless to say, there was another round of spraying, this one not quite so long due to the fact that there was a chemical lake on the landing that nothing could have survived a swim through, no matter how determined. I then sprayed the nasty looking nest like web this guy had crawled out of and snuck back upstairs.

This morning, as I left for work, I noticed all remnants of the spiders were gone--had been cleared away as if they had never even been there.

And god willing, they never will be again.

At least not until I can get another bottle of bug spray. It would seem I'm out at the moment.