The funny thing is, I didn't have a problem with them until about four months ago. Growing up in India, I encountered spiders occasionally. Sometimes they'd have a web in the corner of a ceiling, or they might scuttle over the floor of an outdoor inn, but these occasions were quite few and far between and the spiders were always of unalarming small size.
In fact, in spite of being allergic to spiderwebs (yes, I get hives), I didn't actually yelp or cringe or gasp at the sight of a spider.
Until I moved into our new house, where, to date, we must have unearthed about thirty spiders. For the most part, they've been the small spiders that end up living in houses that aren't occupied (no one had lived in ours for a few months before we moved in). Occasionally, they've been quite large, prompting a squeak from me and an attempt to curl into the farthest corner of the couch while Steve deals with them.
Yesterday?
I kid you not, the spider was nearly four inches long from leg to leg. That's ginormous. And it was smack bang in the middle of the stairs. I didn't see it on my way down, which means I spotted it on my way back up, let out a shriek, and backed hastily down again. I couldn't go back up. Which left me downstairs all day, with my phone, the bathroom and my clothes upstairs.
Yep. I was stuck in a cold house in a flimsy see-through nightshirt until Steve came home from work. Five hours later.
The spider, thankfully, did not move. I checked on it every five minutes. As the day grew darker, I could have sworn it doubled in size.
The moral of the tale? Spiders are the root of all evil.
And get dressed before you go downstairs.
Maybe that's why everyone should have firearms for "home protection"? ; j Or at least a bow and a quiver of arrows.
ReplyDeleteI take it your arachnophobia is bad enough you couldn't put a bowl over it?
Phobias can be tough, I had a cousin who was also arachnophobic, she would have a hard time falling asleep if she knew a spider had been found her room.
On the bright side, you have a leg up on some writers who have never experienced intense fear and try to write about it.
To be honest, I don't like going near spiders but I haven't had a problem putting a bowl over the small ones in the past. This one was just so HUGE, though, every time I tried stepping close to it I freaked out and backed away! :-)
ReplyDeleteErk, I hate spiders with a passion. Why do they always lurk in places that cause such problems? One sat outside our bathroom for hours the other day and I was desperate for the loo!
ReplyDeleteAlex, I was convinced that would happen to me! I just didn't drink anything all day, hoping I wouldn't need the bathroom, and I was lucky. Sigh. Awful, awful things.
ReplyDeleteI'm totally with you on the whole arachnophobia thing. I wasn't really afraid of them until I met Hubby, who is terrified of them, and I guess it rubbed off. Then we lived in a house where in Sept and Oct (i.e., spider season), I kid you not, every single day we'd be surprised somewhere in the house by one of those giant spiders...like the one you found. I'd be going about my day, unsuspecting, then BANG! out of nowhere a spider. And of course I'd scream, then swear, then kill it, then gag cuz I hate killing them (they crunch and make a squelching sound *shudder*). We finally moved to a different state and didn't have any spiders here (yay!) until this year (boo). But only a few (yay!).
ReplyDeleteSo I totally get the whole spider hatin' thing. Hopefully you won't find anymore!
Margaret, I fear I'll have to move if I start coming across the big ones every day! I don't know how you coped :-)
ReplyDeleteI hate them, too! They are the most loathsome and disgusting things to walk the earth and I hate this time of year when the massive ones come inside.
ReplyDeleteThank goodness for our cats who are trained to kill. xxx
*sighs* I do want a cat, Vix. Have for ages. Times like this, though, I really REALLY want a cat!
ReplyDeleteOh my God! How traumatic. I hate spiders, too, and they get monstrous in Michigan. About six months ago, a spider dropped from the ceiling and landed on the keyboard I was using, causing me to do an impressive back flip over the couch.
ReplyDeleteA little before that, my downstairs-dwelling roommate, The Baked Chef, found a Brown Recluse (super poisonous) in the fireplace--and instead of dispatching it, he taped it up ALIVE in a clear cigarette wrapper and posted it on the fridge with a sign saying, "Hey, look at this!" Luckily, my husband got up first and took care of it before I saw it.
I hope you are lucky enough not to have house centipedes in your home. They are so wretchedly terrifying, they make spiders look cute and cuddly. We get them in our basement. Luckily The Baked Chef thinks they are too gross to allow to live, and he kills them. And they are not even a native species--they come from Italy, where they are called "mustache bugs" because they look like mustaches running across the floor. Uggggh!
It didn't move? That's bizarre! Like it was waiting or something. I don't mind spiders in general, either, but that would have creeped me out.
ReplyDeleteEWWW! That would totally freak me out. I don't usually mind small spiders but I certainly don't like the big-uns!
ReplyDeleteWe get giant wolf spiders, 1-2 inches across. And despite my wife's protests, I catch and release.
ReplyDeleteHoly cow, I'd have been TERRIFIED. I'm okay with spiders, but a huge one like that? Weird.
ReplyDeleteOh and i thought i was the only one who despises spiders...so creepy..
ReplyDeleteI'm scared of spiders too. When we lived in Arkansas we had HUGE wolf spiders. They terrified me. One night I saw one in the kitchen. I lined chairs up while I kept my eye on it (I swear it was as big as my palm), a climbed across the chairs to the table rotating the chairs along then moved the chairs across so I could get to the kitchen counter to get a tall glass...You know the giant kind you get at ball games...I got one of those, moved the chairs again until I was in reach of the spider, I put the cup over it and then placed a mug on top of it so it couldn't move the cup and climbed back onto my line of chairs and into the livingroom and awaited my husband's return with all the lights on and my feet up on the sofa. We had an exterminator come once a month after that until we moved to Iowa. This week (we've been here 2 years) I saw my first spider that made me squeal...it was outside. (Great, now I'm going to spider dreams...)
ReplyDeleteHey Sangu thanks for stopping by my last post on SRK and since you said you enjoy his interviews here's one i posted if you'd like to read it :)
ReplyDeletehttp://shahlarveek.blogspot.com/2010/10/dont-question-my-intelligence-srk.html
Enjoy your week~
Wild Rose
Reminds me of "Little miss Muffet"
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