This art has nothing to do with this post.

I have news that may shock some of you. In light of the almost constant threat of spiders, my crippling phobia has lifted somewhat.

Long ago I once reached for a lightswitch. As my finger flooded the black room with light, my eyes fell upon a spider, crouched in terror, about 6 inches from my hand. I ended up the floor, eyes rolling, making a noise like a stricken rabbit.

Present day, I recall this fear somewhat like I recall the joy at Christmas that Santa was coming. I remember that I once felt an intense emotion, but I can't really feel it the same way ever again.

I've taken to naming the ones that aren't really horrific. The ones I essentially can't be arsed to get up from bed or bathroom to kill. A side effect of this is that I have begun to feel a sort of sympathy for them. I imagine I'm pretty damned scary myself, especially naked in the bathroom at 4 am. Don't get me wrong. Huge brown spiders and black widows will always send me running for the broom. I speak of the medium spiders.

Frederique was one of these spiders. I saw him periodically over several days, then finally decided that killing him would be like driving 4000 miles and shooting a good friend. Frederique got a trip outside in the Eli-Plastic-Cup Express.

Jones was a spider recently I had shared the bathroom with. He left me alone and stayed in the corners. Then one night I worried he wasn't finding enough to eat.

I have hit a new milesone I wish to share with you.

I caught Jones in a cup myself and took him outside.

If you aren't impressed by this you don't know me well enough. You might also be a stranger who has wandered across my blog. Hello stranger!

I think I saw a little guy on the window as I was falling asleep last night. I'll keep you posted on Lexington.

Our Phone ran away

Just a heads up to people who may be trying to call. Eli has misplaced his cell phone. Our only real connection to the outside world. It's missing. We tried calling it, but it didn't come back. I think it's dead somewhere under a pile of clothing.

Our land line goes in on July 21st. Toss me an email for the number.

Babies

I noticed today a tiny baby spider floating delicately on the room's air currents. It's transparent perfect little body glided carefree in front of my eyes, legs outstretched as if to say "Look at me! I'm alive!" A miracle of life clapped firmly between two hands.

Looking up, I soon found about twenty more miracles waiting to die. Do you know what baby spiders mean? It means spiders are having sex in my apartment. I will not stand for it.

I decided that rather than lean up and thumb them down individually one by one I would simply get the can of raid. That's what cans of spray are for, right? That's right. They are for spraying an area. An infestation. I was congratulating myself on my fast thinking ("My god! Nobody has ever thought to use spray before on more than on bug at a time!") looking up wide-eyed and blissfully spritzing the ceiling.

3 minutes later, as Eli read the warnings on the can and I flushed the stinging poison from my eyes, it became apparent that I am a blithering moron.

The babies, having begun to die, all slowly started to lose their grip on the ceiling. Tiny twitching bodies threaded down around me like rain. The rain of my own personal hell.

Hours later I'm still killing stragglers, but I am happy to announce that in my zeal, I sprayed so much raid onto a few of them that they have become stuck to the ceiling. I imagine they will still be there in a years time when the lease is up and we bail on this spidertopia.

It's a shame though. I really like the placement of this apartment.


In other news, I have created an ant farm. The ant farm, I have decided, shall have it's own blog. I have no ants in it yet, but I will keep you posted. There is now a link to the side so you can check up on my ants.

Yes. The hypocrisy of this entry is not lost on me.