My aversion to spiders reared its head again this week.
As I’m made clear in this space before. I don’t like spiders. At all. Spiders are creepy looking and they spin creepy-looking webs. They are quiet and unpredictable. They’re sneaky and they show up where you least expect them. They are also used as objects of evil in horror movies.
Last week, I walked out onto my deck and walked right though a spider web. And I hate walking through spider webs. I really hate it.
Anytime I walk through a spider web, I feel like it is still on me. No matter how much I try to brush it off, it feels like the web is still on me. And if the web is still on me, there’s a chance the spider could be on me, too.
It’s an irrational fear. I know that. But it’s my irrational fear, and I’m stuck with it.
I never actually saw the spider. I just felt its web, so I knew it was there. But on Sunday, Milly, the liver and white springer spaniel who lives at my house, was standing at the sliding-glass door barking her head off. I thought she was looking at the geese flying over. She wasn’t.
There on the door was a spider. A big spider. In fact, it was roughly the size of a compact car.
Now, I know that most spiders are harmless. But what if it were a black widow spider? I might be dead before the ambulance even gets to my house.
I’ve tried everything I can think of to get rid of the spiders. I sweep the deck regularly, and I knock down their webs. Somehow, the next morning, the webs are always back. Spiders are resilient, if nothing else.
I recently looked for ways to solve my spider problem. I went to Google and typed in “How do I get rid of spiders?”
The first answer that popped up, I kid you not, was, “Whack them with a shoe.”
While that wasn’t the solution I was hoping for, it was a better idea than the method a German woman used. According to a news story I read, the woman, concerned about the number of spiders in her garage, sprayed the spiders with hair spray. When that didn’t kill them, she held a match to them.
But since hair spray is flammable, her house caught on fire and it burned to the ground.
“She did get rid of the spiders,” a policeman was quoted as saying.
I don’t really want to go so far as burning down my house. So I asked some co-workers for advice on how they get rid of spiders at their homes.
“I usually just whack them with a shoe,” a colleague said.
I’ll be honest here. I don’t really want to kill the spiders. If I could just get the spiders away from my door, I’d be content to live and let live. I know that spiders do serve a purpose. They eat other insects — especially flies and mosquitoes — and that’s certainly a noble calling. I’m fine with my spiders eating as many mosquitoes as they can stomach.
I just don’t want them doing it where I have to walk through their webs.
But I’m putting the spiders on notice. If I can’t find a better way of keeping you away from my doors, I know what I have to do.
Whack them with a shoe.
