I Already Know Everything About Spiders
Stop Telling Me Spider Facts or Else
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Any time I post about seeing a scary spider in my house a whole bunch of you message me like, “oh that’s just a [this kind of spider], they’re actually harmless”/“spiders are actually really beneficial, they actually eat bugs”/“actually if you catch it and put it outside it will actually just die,” and stuff like that, when, like, I didn’t ask what kind of spider is this or will it kill me or should I put it outside??????? I just said look at this scary guy?????????????? Sometimes I just want you to feel the scariness of the guy with me.
I don’t know if you’re like this, but at least for me, when I am obsessively frightened of something, I spend all my time trying to learn everything about it (see also: serial killers, bear attacks, roller coaster accidents, the ocean), AND I have spent my entire life in the Pacific Northwest, which means I know what a Giant House Spider is and have found them in my bed many times. I know the scientific name, for dang’s sake!!!!!
As a person who is irrationally afraid of spiders, I am aware that it is irrational--I do not actually believe that the spiders in my house could kill me. I just have a bad body feeling when I see one, or a piece of lint or plant matter that looks like one, and would like to be vaporized with a missile when I think about one walking on me. (Oddly, I am not afraid of snakes, many of which could kill me and would love to! I sometimes go out into the woods and just grab them!!)
Anyway, Giant House Spiders are SO big. I know they don’t want to bite me. The problem is that they are as large as a Smurf and their legs are so long.
You can head over to my Instagram stories today if you would like to follow the saga of what happened when I found a three-apples-tall Eratigena atrica (formerly Tegenaria gigantea) hiding in my honeycomb blinds. I have no proof that this spider was gravid and about to squirt spiderlings all over my TV room, but I have no proof that she WASN’T, and unfortunately that is a death sentence under my current spider policy. (Current policy is: all outdoor spiders can live, indoor spiders that are in the basement or high up in corners or seem to just be chilling far away from my bed can live, indoor spiders that are on furniture or in piles of laundry or touching my body or dangling down from the ceiling have to die, and all condemned spiders are smashed rather than put outside because I do buy into that thing about inside spiders not surviving outside anyway.)
In keeping with today’s theme, I have decided that this week’s Butt News Movie Club movie will be………
I hate it already! Somebody send me a John Goodman body pillow to comfort me, please!
Love ya, see u Friday. <3
LW
LINDY YES THAT IS EXACTLY THE CORRECT SPIDER POLICY; I have explained those PRECISE rules so many times and people always look at me like I'm a big spider kook when I'm just a regular kook with perfectly reasonable spider rules!
We have even ceded the territory of our tiny balcony; the spiders own it now and that is fine, we can still look out at the trees from the other side of the screen door.
I have never felt more seen.
Let me help all of you who don't want Giant House Spiders moving in during the colder months... starting when the nighttime temps drop below 45 degrees (late August, early September), start spraying around your doors, windows and air vents with an essential oil spray like orange or lemon about once a week. Once I started doing that, as well as not leaving the door from the garage into the house open for longer than 30 seconds, the sightings dwindled to nothing. You're welcome.