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Charlie Hatton
Brookline, MA
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Howdy, friendly reading person!Well, spring has finally sprung, more or less, in New England. Don’t get me wrong — it’s still pretty damned chilly around Boston. Right now, it’s in the forties. The low forties. I walked out the door this morning, and found a scraggly little robin sitting on the porch. The bird looked at me and gave me a little ‘CHIRP‘, which I took to mean: ‘I flew back from fucking Florida for this?‘ I felt sorry for the thing, until it took a fairly-frozen poop on my car. Fricking birds.
Of course, spring also brings us other things. Like insects.
(I know, I know — I’m a hopeless romantic. Yeah.)
I’ve already been seeing a few of the little flying critters in the house, and it’s only going to get worse as the weather heats up. I’ve got this thing about bugs — I don’t like them, and they… well, they don’t really have brains, to speak of. So they probably don’t feel one way or the other about me, I suppose. As long as you’re not ‘food’, ‘sex’, or ‘roach motel’, then you’re pretty much off the radar.
(Come to think of it, that’s pretty much how I lived myself, all the way through college. And unfortunately, I spent more time avoiding roach motels than enjoying the other two. So pretty much, any bug alive is having a better time than I did in four years. Bastards.)
So, the bugs are back, and I’ve already sent a few to meet their hairy, creepy, icky little maker. But I can’t kill them all myself, and that’s why I’ve made a compromise of sorts this spring. I’ve formed an uneasy truce with the spider that lives in our bathroom.
Which is to say, I’m uneasy about it. I think we’ve pretty well established that the spider couldn’t give a gnat’s ass. Still, it’s creepy for me. I don’t normally associate with ‘that kind’ of animal, you know? Mainly, it’s all those extra body parts — that’s just freaky. And if I wanted eight legs and four pairs of eyes skittering around my house, I’d have the neighbor’s kids over to rummage through my shit. Yeah, no thanks.
But crawly bugs call for desperate measures. And the spider and I have a common enemy, so we’re a team. At least until fall, when I’ll be perfectly happy to moosh the little bastard with a shoe. That’s how I roll, baby. Ruthless. Dig it.
Of course, my wife has other ideas. She wants the thing dead now. I’ve tried to reason with her — let one bug live, and dozens might die. ‘Spare the spider, and curse the flies,’ that kind of thing. Personally, I look at the law of averages — so far as I know, there’s only one spider in the house. And there are all sorts of gnats and flies and mothy little buggers out there. So it’s really a matter of which is more likely to lay eggs in my Cheerios. My money’s on the non-spiders. But I still eyeball my breakfast before I add milk. You can never be too careful when larvae are involved. Seriously. I never want to have another one of those trips to the doctor. Whoo.
So, we’re living with a delicate balance of power. I want the bugs dead, so I let the spider live. And my wife wants the spider out — but she’s not so tall, so she can’t reach him on the ceiling. So I’ve set him up in his own little DMZ — as long as he stays up there, he’s free to gobble up the insects. And the bugs — well, they just want food and sex. Which I’m a big fan of, but not the bug kind. So basically, the spider’s getting a good deal out of this, and the rest of us are getting screwed. Or pissed. Or eaten. What was my point again?
I dunno. Springtime always makes me a little loopy. Anyway, happy Monday, folks. I’m off to keep an eye on that spider. I’ll let him stick around, but I don’t trust the little bastard.
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Hey there
this entry just made my day. It has taken me the 20 years that I have lived to begin to make truces with spiders. Being reduced to terror at seeing one, I have been paralyzed long enough to have a small chat with the last critter that entered my bathroom (via drain in bathtub…I didn’t shower at my house for a week) and found that as long as they don’t move, they’re not so bad. Granted, once he wasn’t looking, I took the hand held shower and drowned the fucker, but I did try. Now, they’re taken outside on my shoes. Alive. Spring is here. But I’m leaving a new spider corpse on my front steps to warn the others.
Hey, by the way, do you mind if I add you as a friend/link on my blog? You’re stuff is too good to not be mentioned!
I’ve just got to side with your wife on this one. Sorry, but spiders are just bigger, scarier bugs than, say, flies.
Haven’t you heard that a person will SWALLOW an average of 11 spiders during their lifetime – while sleeping no less! *shudder* Yep, you’re snoring and drooling away in dreamtime bliss, and the darned creepy things will CRAWL RIGHT DOWN YOUR THROAT!
Yep, I don’t like ’em.
Besides, now that I’ve moved from “the city” to “the country”, this is my first spring with country spiders. Let me tell you, Country Spiders give city spiders the willies. And me. One actually left a stain on my carpet where met it’s untimely demise – that’s how big it was.
Okay, enough. I’m giving myself the willies.
ugh. Country spiders. Been there. Never went back. Tried calling the cops on one, once. They’re bloody huge, literally imported from south america, I think.
funny but i still have dreams about spiders, thanks to the ramshackle house i grew up in.
No guilt about soaking the bastards in Raid, them and all there offspring *shudder*
You know what’s really neat about Raid? When you spray it dead on them, it encloses them, like turning them into a little spider mummy. wow, that was slightly sadistic sounding.
Your wife is definitely right on this. Kill the little monster. Spiders = evil. End of story. Give me flies over a spider any day.
At my old house, those big water spiders as big as silver dollars used to dwell in my basement. I had a computer down there. Every once in a while I would find one and freak out. Daddy-long-legs used to come down from the ceiling right in front of my face while I was using the computer and scare the crap out of me. Teeny-tiny almost-can’t-be-seen spiders would crawl up my arm and bite me. Spiders also inhabited my bedroom. Suffice to say that it was my nightmare come to life.
Death to spiders! And damn your sadistic cruncyfrog spamsucker!
If you ever want to kill your spider, I have a pet tarantula I can sic on it. Two in fact.
This doesn’t surprise you the least little bit, does it.
I grew up in the country and although I don’t mind spiders unless they’re the size of a tea-cup and hairy, I did once wake up to find a spider drowned in my drool on my pillow. Ewwww. Nonetheless I support your not killng of your resident spider. You’re right, they do rid the house of other nasties and it’s supposedly back luck to kill spiders!
i am not crazy about bugs. so i would just try and kill them all.if you have a system though and it is working i would have to say stay with it.
The only good spider, is a dead one. I hate having to do hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand to hand combat with them. And, all those eyes. No spider is too small/big to meet his maker. I’m sorry, I have spiders in my garden and I don’t see enough shrouded corpses ensnared in webs to justify letting a spider live. DEATH TO ALL SPIDERS. Yeah, tell me about all the insects we’d have if there were no spiders. Sorry, a flyswatter is all I need; or a shoe or a newspaper. Besides, a fly will die in a couple of days. OK, don’t even think about what he’s thrown up/pooped on. But, that’s a whole other website.