I hate bugs. Hate them. I don’t do many outdoorsy things (like camping…shudder) because of, you guessed it, the bugs. The most outdoorsy I get is the screened-in-porch where I sleep at my parents cottage. At the top of my list of most hated bugs? Spiders. Even typing the word, legit gives me the shivers. I almost want to leave a ____ where the word goes instead of typing it. Much like they used to do with the word ‘God’ in the Bible. They’re totally similar, right?! …..Okay, haven’t been struck by lightening yet for that one, so moving on. And it’s not one of those cute…”eww a spider!”…it’s a full on pho-bi-a. The bigger the spider, the bigger the freak out. Reactions include, but are not limited to: crying, screaming, sprinting, sweating, swearing, and once almost preterm labor. True story. We were in our basement watching a movie, I was very near the end of the pregnancy and a spider crawled right next to my arm on the couch. I didn’t think it was physically possible for me to still move that fast at that size, but I was off the couch across the room screaming in under 2 seconds. Thank goodness Eric found it amongst the blankets and killed it, or I would have never ventured downstairs again.

I have no idea where this phobia came from, but I am sure it’s partially my dads fault. My aunts (his sisters) will attest, he loves a good scare. Back when they were kids he would hide under their beds and grab their feet as they crawled into bed for the night. The stuff nightmares are made of. He never chose that particular method of torture for me, but he would grab my leg through the stair railing occasionally as I walked to my room. I think you can sense why I feel he might have something to do with my irrational fear of a fairly bite-sized creature.

As cruel fate would have it, since Eric passed away, I’ve seen the biggest spiders ever at my house. The cherry [sized bug] on top of an awful few months. I have had to kill a few on my own…and took a few years off my life in the process…but mostly I try and find ANYONE else to do it for me. Hilary (my sister) has been the brave warrior on more than one occasion. Favorite method of death for said spiders have been wasp killer spray, followed by a flyswatter after we’re pretty positive it’s already dead. Half a can per spider seems to be our M.O. The residual residue and fumes kill everything else in the vicinity. I’m sure those fumes are really good for us too.

Tonight when we got home from the lake we did the normal perimeter sweep of the door before venturing inside. An enemy was in our midst. Hilary soaked him with wasp killer, but he scurried away (covered in spray), so we couldn’t smash him. We’re fairly positive that he died among the siding somewhere. It was also the night to take the garbage to the street, so we were checking out the can to make sure there was nothing else behind enemy lines….there was. And the horror continued – we had run out of wasp killer. Neither of us were prepared to kill this (seriously massive) spider without the aforementioned coma-maker. We tried to come up with something else in the garage we could spray it with, but alas, nothing besides spray paint, which I wasn’t willing to spray all over my house – unlike pretty much anything else. So we did what had to be done. Called a man. Enter Ben, knight in shining armor. Bless his heart. He lives a block away, and got out of bed to come save our lives. Yes, our LIVES. Thankfully, Ben spent a year in Australia where he saw spiders the size of his fist…please excuse me while I go simultaneously vomit and cross Australia off my list of places to visit…he killed it with ease. And no visible fear, unlike myself, the spectator.

There’s a lot of reasons I miss Eric, but having a live in bug killer has GOT to be in my top ten list. 😉