Our house is full of spiders.
I'll give some you time to decide whether or not to read on. If you are feeling anxious, you might pray to St. Felix of Nola, who was protected from being killed during one of the many persecutions by a spider who covered his hiding place with a quickly spun web.
That could happen here any minute. I wish it would. At least, I wish the spiders would just web up the kitchen and we could skip doing the dishes. I have been trying for weeks to get the laborers across the street putting a third story on the McMansion to pop over and brick up the kitchen but they don't speak English and I don't speak Spanish.
I have not....I'm joking.
If St. Felix hasn't helped you yet, stop here.
We have about a zillion of those Daddy Long Legs spiders all over the house. We have many other types of spiders around but not in any great numbers. We rarely see the other types of spiders, who are much better at hiding themselves.
These big Daddies just don't care who sees them. They loll around everywhere.
I let them live here on purpose.
I remember being told as a girl that "spiders are good luck." Now as Catholics we are not allowed to believe in "luck." God has a plan for you. He's didn't make a plan saying, "She'll be called to do this but only if she's lucky." "Hope this soul comes my way! Good Luck Mr. Soul! Hate to think you'd have rotten luck and burn in Hell!" The three leaf clover is a symbol of the Holy Trinity. The four leaf clover is a clover that has an extra leaf.
I let the spiders thrive because I think they eat the termites. I hope they do anyhow. They are our only hope to keep this house standing. Daddy Long Legs spiders are voracious eaters, I've read, and as these seem to be thriving with nothing whatsoever in their webs, I can only conclude they are thriving on the termites. Otherwise during the next big wind we'll find ourselves like Pig One and Pig Two. Pig Three has not built any house of bricks. She's fantastically old and in a wheel chair.
There is a limit to how many spiders we can deal with, though, so today, after discovering a bite on Sister Mary Fiacre, I decided to vacuum them up. This is a regular cycle. I usually wait until I myself have a bite or two. Bugs love really pale people, so although I may look like a bloodhound, I have the skin of Nosferatu. The bugs always come for me first. If I'm getting chewed it's only a matter of time before we are all bitten up. We can't let the spiders eat Sister Mary Fiacre.
I feel terrible sucking them all up, I really do. All God's creatures, great and small...eat each other all the time, so I guess I shouldn't feel bad.
And they'll be back.
13 comments:
Even my aversion to arachnids can't keep me from bowling over with laughter (and hitting a wasp or two in our old farmhouse - I sympathize, I really do).
My mother used to say that killing a spider will make it rain. This doesn't work during a drought....
'Tis a great talent to be able to describe being attacked by a swarm of eight-legged critters so delightfully! Hilarious stuff, and don't worry about sucking them up -- I think you've balanced out your karma (though if you're not allowed to believe in luck, karma's probably not on the okay list, either, huh?) by making me smile and giggle so early in the morning!
I have a friend who is absolutely terrified of spiders but she absolutely refused to kill them and she has a whole family of the furryish ones chilling out on her front porch. The daddies don't faze me, but keep the furry ones far away, please.
Also, I'm a pale-y, too, so I feel your pain on the being the first to get eaten up thing.
We used to suffer from wolf -type spiders at our last house, and those things are FAST. hard to suck up with the vacuum. Not only that, I was never sure they were REALLY dead in the vacuum, and had visions of them crawling out again after I turned the vacuum off, so I would suck up small rocks from the planter outside and hope they would hit the spiders once they reached the bag. (My mom vacuumed up hundreds of ladybugs once and they all crawled right out of the vacuum.)
Yeah, I used to deal with roaches (in my first, awful apartment) with the vacuum. I'm not convinced that it kills them. I suggest changing the bag immediately after your efforts, because the vacuum effect ends right after the power shuts off.
Of course, if your vacuum has a BLOW function, you could take it outside and shoot the daddies over to the McMansion. Consider it an act of Christian charity - if you have termites, they probably do too.
And I second KJ - daddies don't really bother me, but if they're furry or venomous, I don't want to hear about them. :-p
According to my daughter who is an arachniphobe, Daddy Long Legs spiders are very poisonous, however their mouths are too tiny to actually bite people. The bites must be coming from some other arachnid.
Hope this tidbit of information is a comfort.
Blessings.
I sprayed a NASTY BIG HUGE BROWN SPIDER with household cleaning products...chased it with a brown..it finally curled up in a corner. Then I used tongs and put it into an old Paul Masson (empty) wine bottle...big on the bottom, with a long stem. Then I covered the top. Wash going to flush him, but on second thoughts....took him out to the ivy outside my mondo condo and dropped him in there. He ran away with delight.
And my house is FREE of him. God be praised.
Cathy, your daughter is correct about the poison.
Kasia, I would certainly love to blow the spiders across the street and into the McMansion. And because I would love to do that, I'll have to go to confession.
Isn't there also a German thing about Christmas spiders?
I vacuum spiders too. I feel bad about it but it's probably kinder than squishing them. I presume they remain alive inside the vacuum cannister, and are probably happy there because there are tons of tasty microbes for them to eat. I always vacuum a kleenex after the spider so that he can't crawl back out. :)
OK, now I get to be scared of daddies too! Thanks Cathy!
In Greece, the spiders are jumping spiders.
I was never afrid of spiders until I tried to clean house in Greece, with spiders randomly jumping on me.
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