June 25, 2002
I like spiders. I like them a lot. I have a lot of respect for anything that catches and eats biting insects. Most bloodsucking insects think I am the most delicious hunk of meat and I have not attained the higher state of zen being that allows me to stop myself from scratching myself bloody either consciously or when asleep.
I am healthily afraid of black widows. I love to pick blackberries and have picked them since I was too young to read. My in-depth experience in berrypicking has lead me to conclude that black widows like blackberry thickets a lot, and I know the sorts of places that they like to hang out in those thickets and understandably, I avoid them. Of course, I'm the sort of berryer who brings pruning sheers and leather gloves to get to particularly distant or well-protected berry caches, well, and to avoid black widow bites.
When we moved, we knew we were leaving suburbia. Possibly the several acres of sagebrush thickets and the high grass in the front yard (a term I use loosely), where typically a lawn would reside tipped us off. Perhaps, the in-fucking-credible view of the wetlands and mountain range, whilst bunnies hopped through our "yard" tipped us off. I think though, when the cable guy came and flipped the lid from the crawlspace under the house and found a gigantic black widow with three egg sacs adorning the backside of said lid is when we really knew. We live in the country.
Laugh...call me a bumpkin...Go crazy with that. I have a kickass garden and I watch the sun set over the mountains every night with an fairly unimpeded view.
I think when the cable guy showed me webs as far as the eye could see under the house, I should have clued in to the ubiquitous nature of our arachnid issues, but I was hoping they'd just stay under the house and leave us alone and we'd all be cool. I took on a "I can't see you, so you can't see me" point of view about the whole thing because afterall we were in the middle of moving. I just made sure that the kids wore shoes to go outside and figured I'd get to it.
At the time, I casually mentioned dropping a bomb under the house to kill them, to which my son replied,"Won't that blow up the house?" and then couldn't figure a way to get it under there without risking a bite.
I'm allergic to bees, so I'm not really comfortable with the idea of anything insectoid biting me. I think it's that whole "don't want to die" thing.
So, we went along our merry way unpacking, getting the household set up, etc. and I began to put a few potted plants in the back yard to pretty up the patio. I sent Russell out to water the plants and the hose was leaking a little by the faucet and a small pool of water gathered under the faucet and then started moving to the slat-covered water shutoff next to. He came running in looking a little panicky,"Mom! There are black widows out there!" I went out and sure enough. There was one big ass black widow he'd flooded out, which was crawling up the side of the house. I protectively shoved him back into the house, even though we were a good five feet from the spider and went inside to get my shoes.
I knocked my shoes to check for...well, BLACK WIDOWS. What do you think? I went into the kitchen and started hunting around for bug killer spray. I finally found some and brought it out and sprayed the thing. As I did so, some of the spray of course, went to the spider's hiding place and two of its friends were crawling around there, too, so we sprayed them, too. I totally understand police officers who shoot the crap out of someone, now. I just wanted to kill them and kill them a LOT.
The following Monday morning, I called me a man -- an Orkinman.
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