Monday, July 30, 2007

Eeeek!

When I was a teenager, I had a basement bedroom. It wasn't too bad, no ceiling, and I remember it had nice thick carpet - I had chosen a very light off-white that looked good for about 1 hour, until I spilled my Cover Girl Clean Makeup, True Ivory Foundation on it.

Because it was a basement bedroom, there were a lot of spiders. Really a lot. Some people can take a tissue and squish it, but not me. I was always afraid that I wouldn't squish fast enough and the thing would crawl out on my hand. So I chose a method of death for the spider that was long and ultimately inconvenient for me and anyone who happened to come into my room.

I started out placing the lid to my hot curlers over the spider. Remember hot curlers? I was a whiz at making big bouncy curls that lasted until I ran a vent brush through them. At least until I started getting perms. It was the 80's and believe me, I was rockin' the frizzy curls. Anyway, the hot curler lid made a pretty good little house for the spider - kept it away from me until it finally starved to death, usually a week long process. Then I started using plastic cups or glasses to trap the little buggers and soon my room became a minefield of overturned glasses. I had to walk around the things! Crazy, but there was no way I was going near that spider until it could be vacuumed up without me having to chase it.

I hate spiders. Creepy, evil-looking, devil bugs.


I found this bad boy walkin' on my kitchen floor the other night.





I trapped him under a glass, old habits, you know. I was afraid to hit him with my flip flop - he was just too big. His body was maybe 1/3 of an inch thick and you can see how long he was. The bottom of the drinking glass is 2 1/4 inches!

I slid a piece of paper under the glass and turned it over so I could take a picture. I was all goosebumpy and almost in tears. Cameron, my prince, took it into the bathroom and dumped him into the toilet. Before we could even flush, he started to crawl up the side of the toilet. We all started screaming and jumping up and down. Cameron pushed the lever and he swirled away to his death.

I'm still jittery and itchy and I have to check to toilet before I sit down to make sure he hasn't crawled back up to seek revenge on me. I am freaked!

What is the worst thing you have found in your home, apartment, dorm or missionary dwelling? Make me feel better!

12 comments:

Suz Q Free Tibet said...

I literally should be doing my laundry right now!!! But, this subject is more exciting to me. I'm sorry this is such a long story!!!
A couple of weeks ago, I was on the phone with a friend...about 2 a.m. in the morning....she started screaming..."Kill the spider! Kill the spider!" I thought she was joking with me...I had no idea that my dear friend was deathly afraid of spiders! She asked me to come over to her house and kill it! I was like...are you kidding?? I had my bra off and was ready for bed. After about ten minutes of me trying to calm her down, she still insisted on me killing the "huge" spider. I went to her house. The spider was in her family room and she wouldn't even go into the room. She gave me a paper towel and had me on the hunt! Meanwhile her pug dog was very hiper from all the excitement. I went to get the spider and the dog thought we were playing a game. He snatched the paper towel out of my hand and wanted me to play. Meanwhile my friend is yelling, "Kill the spider! Kill the spider?" I start laughing and then proceed to chase the pug around the coffee table. My friend and I start to laugh and I thought, "I can't believe I'm doing this...just to get a spider!" As you can now guess...the spider got away and I couldn't find him. The pug had a great night of excitement and I think him and the spider had a little agreement with eachother at my expense!

dishes and laundry said...

I love that story - and I love that you're up so late. Go spider killer!
Mmmwaah

sugarbritches said...

I so remember the same spider issues because Nat and I always slept in the basement, unfinished and finished and there was always tons of spiders. It was horrible. The two worst basement bug episodes were, the time we lived in a duplex briefly and nat and i were in the unfinished basement. We came upon this GINORMOUS spider, it was the size of a taratula but it was green and is JUMPED. Natalie were freaking about it and we tried to drop the Fisher Price garage on it and it kept jumping away. Finally I think we trapped it under a laundry basket if you can imagine, it was that big. No clue what happened to it. The second was when we first moved into our Sandy house, nat and i found a small scorpion in our room. Holy crap that was scary!

Suz Q Free Tibet said...

Scorpions are wicked!!

ash said...

When we lived in Florida we had all these little gecko lizards that would end up in the house. I wasn't really scared of them, but Jack (our awesome mini-wiener) would chase them all over the apartment.

Funny until he ate them. (And that's the part that grossed me out).

I don't do spiders either. Jared kills them for me. GO CAM!

dishes and laundry said...

Spiders and scorpions and geckos, Oh My!

wahwee said...

I guess I am not that creeped out by spiders. I don't like them, but I have no problem killing them. I like it when I squish them in t.p. and hear their little bodies crack. I also enjoy flushing them down the toilet.

I totally remember your zoo/morgue of spiders in your bedroom. Why didn't I just lift the suffocation device and crunch them in toilet paper? Maybe I wasn't so brave back then. Too bad I don't live closer to you. I would come and kill spiders for you.

I am just glad that if we have a mouse (my fear!) and Mike is out of town (or even in town), Bronson LOVES removing the dead rodent from the trap and disposing of it. He has been well trained and knows the rules. (1) Wear gloves. (2) DO NOT SHOW MOM HIS PRIZE! (3) Dispose of properly. (4) DO NOT TELL MOM DETAILS OF THE MANGLED RODENT and (5) Wash his hands. (Even though he was wearing gloves)

dishes and laundry said...

Wow, you've got Bronson trained so well. I don't think Cam would do the mouse thing - I'd have to call a home teacher. That's very brave of him.
I called suz q to come kill my spider for me, but she didn't answer her phone. I just might call you next time - I'll buy you a Diet Coke.
I cannot handle the spider body cracking. At all.

Elise said...

I once picked up a dead cockroach with my foot.(I apparently have the opposite freakish foot problem, Wendy,-toes long enough to work as utensils). I thought it was the fake rubber cockroach my brother used to scare us with. Even better, I was on the phone when I did it, so i realized what I had done and the cockroach and the phone went flying and I ran and screamed through the house.

dishes and laundry said...

Awesome, Elise. I can picture you doing that. Thank goodness it was dead!

Kat said...

Ok Wendy I got one for you. 10 years of greenhouse has taught me many lessons. My #1 rule is never wear shorts no matter how hot. Because fleshy legs are much more tempting to the evil little buggers then good ole worn out jeans. My crew was always on the look out for widow since the area we work in was ideal conditions for them. One year one of the houses got a black widow infestation. It was so bad that the plants on the tables were cover with webs and you could not walk down the aisles without getting webs across the face. Now I know your asking yourself why go in there, and I assure you it was only done on a need to bases. But the worse was when my crew and I would be at lunch eating our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and generally giving each other a bad time when out of the blue tiny black spiders would cast webs before our eyes and crawl off our heads. To this day it still makes me shutter. We soon realized they needed to get considerably larger before they truly were dangerous. However it did not stop me from coming home nightly and taking as hot of a shower as I could stand just to be sure there was nothing trying to take up residence in my hair!!!!

dishes and laundry said...

Oh, that gives me chills! I couldn't have worked there, no way, no how!