dodraibeid

The spiders are back. Dammit!

Now, don't get me wrong. I have nothing against spiders. In fact, I quite like them. They really do do an excellent job of keeping the flies out of the house in the summertime, and spider webs are really mindblowingly beautiful. The problem is this: The incredibly talented spiders build these gorgeous webs that keep the flies at bay right in the most travelled parts of the friggin house! I really love looking at the webs, Really I do, but do they have to build them right in the doorways at face level? I mean really, nothing is more frustrating than trying to pick that shit off of your skin, and spider bites do tend to be quite painful. Last summer it got to be a real problem. I feel really bad tearing down the webs, but there's really no alternative. Last year they built one in one of the kitchen doorways. It was really impressive, so we decided to leave it alone. We put up big yellow signs not to walk through it, and we put caution tape below it so illiterate people would get the message. The next morning, we found a bigger web in the other doorway. Give those fuckers an inch, man. We tore down the second one, and left an apology note to the spider suggesting he ask the other if he needed a webmate. Apparently that was a no go, cause the next day there was a HUGE web streching from the hood of the stove to the range. I mean this thing was enormous! I didn't have the heart to tear it down right away. I was really impressed, and I was also kind of curious to see how effective it would be. I mean the stove, with all the food smells and everything, it really was prime real estate. We let it sit for about half a day (LOTS of flies in it, by the way) before we tore it down. In retrospect, it probably wasn't fair to the spider to wait like that because he caught all those flies and didn't get to eat them. Which sucks to be him, but hey. He's a bloody spider. If he really wanted food that bad he shouldn't have set up camp in our kitchen. Fucker wasn't even paying us rent like he promised. Meanwhile the other spider web remained in the doorway. Next day, web over the sink. Day after, web over the counter. The day after that we actually caught the spider and stuck him on the other web. That didn't go over well at all. The two spiders began to fight. It was really fascinating in a National Geographic meets WWF sort of way. After the original spider won the fight (and ATE his opponent) we let him hang out for a few more days, but the webs were really getting out of control. We didn't have an infestation per se, but Every day there was another web somewhere. Of it wasn't in our way, we left it up. If it was, we tore it down. BUt they started to be more and more in the way, so we decided to evict the spiders. We went around the house to all the webs and caught its respective spider (if there was one to catch) and put them all in the back yard. I'd like to think they formed a little commune. More likely they formed an army and have been plotting a takeover of the house all year. Even more likely that they either killed each other or trotted off to build a web outside. Whatever the case, there was a fucking web across my front door when I got home from work this morning. And so it begins...