You know what they say – You can lead a spider to water, but you can’t make it drink.
No, that’s not right.
How about – A spider in the hand is worth two hiding behind your couch.
Errr, that’s not it, either.
I know! If you give a spider a cookie, he’s going to want a glass of milk…
If I sound delusional yet, it’s probably because lately I’ve had a particularly rough time with some unwelcome houseguests, and no, I don’t mean Weird Uncle Arnold who still insists on making his annual pilgrimage down to our sofa so that he’s in close enough proximity to fully immerse himself in the 24-hours of zany fun that are the National Kumquat Festival … although note to self: only eight precious months left until we have to entertain that whole fruity fiasco again…
In the meantime, though, I find myself with an arguably creepier problem, and as you may have discerned from my feeble attempt at poetic discourse … well, it’s those damn spiders again, I tell ya! And mind you, here at Casa de Sevener, we’ve always had somewhat of a problem with insects of varying shapes and sizes, but I swear this year it seems like the spiders are out in full force and more and more of them are taking up residence in the nooks and crannies of my house. Aside from the obvious “bugs in the house – eek!”-related complaints, though, I also have a couple of entirely different concerns that I’d like to focus on here today.
For starters, frankly I don’t even know what I’m dealing with anymore here because it seems like no matter how many of these googly-eyed, little bastards that I kill, another one is always nearby to scamper out of the woodwork an hour later when I’m back to watching So You Think You Can Rake… and my guard is down once again. It’s almost as if there are hundreds of the things just waiting for the green light to dash out center stage onto my living room carpet, but the really weird thing is … I’ve only ever seen one show himself at a time … which as you would assume can mean only one of two things – either these spiders are ridiculously methodic when it comes to home invasion, OR I’m not actually killing nearly as effectively as I’d like to think and in fact, it’s the same spider that keeps charging out time and time again like some sort of hormone-enraged super spider. At this point, it could be either one…
The second thing is that throughout my vast research of these wicked invaders (i.e. watching frighteningly close-up spider videos on YouTube), one thing I’ve come to learn is that this particular species of spider is what they call a nocturnal hunter, meaning that they prey on other insects and pests while I’m sleeping obliviously in the other room … and you can probably see where I’m going with this one – what if I finally do manage to get rid of these spiders, only to then learn that they were actually keeping at bay some even more obnoxious and/or disgusting bugs that now have free reign to wander my house and rub their disgusting bug butts across my pillow when I’m not home? How awkward would that exchange then be, to have to go back to the very same spiders that I kicked out and beg them to return so that I don’t have to check for disgusting bug butt on my pillow each night before I go to sleep?!
It’s a conundrum that honestly I just have no desire to deal with right now. The weather has been just ridiculously hot out, thanks to old Mother Nature gracing us with an early summer, I’ve been getting really into the new Final Fantasy game that came out recently, and frankly, the last thing I feel like doing is actually having to ponder over these baffling possibilities each and every time I’m required to jump up when I hear my wife utter those five magic words, “There’s a spider – kill it!” Why can’t these six-legged, little freaks fellas just stay outside, or at least out of sight if they’re going to call my house their home?!
Seriously, I’m asking – why?! If any of you out there are psychologists who happen to specialize in human-spider relations, help a brother out here because I’m losing it!
Oh great, there goes another one…
Arrrgggghhhh!