The Itsy Bitsy.....yeah, right!

I hate spiders. Small ones that don't run around like crazy are tolerable if they're not too near, or inside. The bigger they are the scarier they are, and they should not be in your house (or car) at all.

I was driving on the NY State thruway way when the kids were little, my daughter still in a car seat, my son maybe 6. The car was this enormous grey station wagon. That's right, a station wagon. Third seat and everything. How can that be safe, incidentally? Here, let's put children back here! Let's face them so they can see what is coming, perhaps they can warn us of impending doom bringing up the rear! No sense. That car *had* air conditioning, but it never worked. I'm hot, I need working air conditioning. I digress.

So we're cruising along, both kids in the back seat (not the suicide seat, the regular back seat) and I glance in the rear view mirror to check on my angels, and see one of my worst nightmares coming to life. Toddling along the top of the back seat is a large (everything is relative, you'll understand shortly) spider. Right above my baby's head. 

I am going 65ish, in six lanes of cars and trucks. I tell my six year old about the heinous interloper, hoping he will be brave enough to kill it. He is not, and it freaks him out. Hysteria soon overcomes us, my son is yelling; the baby, who had no idea what is going on but knows there must be something horrible happening, is crying, and I'm about to join her. 

I'm trying to drive and keep an eye on the spider. I finally manage to pull over and stop the car, and the spider is located and dealt with accordingly. I take no pleasure in killing spiders, I don't want to kill anything. I don't even want to get near enough to a spider to be able to kill it, but the alternative is to go all Discovery Channel and scoop it up in something for release, and uh no, that is definitely not happening.

Some people are scared of snakes and don't so much care about spiders. I don't really understand that, because how many times have you had a snake in your car, or house? Snakes mind their business. Spiders know no boundaries.

We have been in our current house a couple of years, and when we first moved in, we had new carpeting put in several rooms. Some of it was Karastan, and I believe their base of operations is in the Carolinas. About a month after the carpeting was installed, on a beautiful October morning, I got in the shower. Lather rinse repeat. 

Upon wrapping myself in a towel, something shiny catches my eye on the gray floor. Huh, funny, that looks like.... eyes. My own eyes were not grasping the scope of this ENORMOUS spider, I was simply in disbelief. When the realization hit me, yes, there is a HUGE spider on my bathroom floor, so big that I saw his EYES shining from across the room, I say what any logical person would under these circumstances: "You have got to be (extremely bad word here) kidding me!" Out loud, to myself. No one else is home.

I am home alone, wrapped only in a towel, and the bug spray is down stairs under the kitchen sink. To think of using bug spray on a spider of this size seems laughable, but I couldn't bring myself to kill it any other way, and the humane method is out of the question. This thing was almost as big as my palm, and beefy. I have honestly never seen a spider so big. The only saving grace the spider gives me is that he is staying still, in one place.

I wrestle with what to do. What if I run downstairs and get the spray, and come back and I can't find him? We would have no choice but to sell the house. 

I know no one else will be home for many hours. I really have no choice. I have no one to watch the spider for me or go fetch the spray while I watch him, so I make a run for it. I come back, and he's in exactly the same position, and I thank God (out loud). I don't want to spray him, because I'm afraid once he gets sprayed he's going to freak out and run all over, which will in turn freak me out. I hold my breath and think how absolutely disgusting this thing is, and spray from as far away as my arm will let me. I keep spraying, and this is one hardy mutant freak of a spider. I HAVE to watch him to be sure a: I know where he is at all times and b: to make sure he dies.

Then he does something horrible. He starts to crawl up the bathroom door. I keep spraying until he finally succumbs and drops off the door. He makes a SOUND when he hits the floor. Horrible. He dies, and I have to keep going back multiple times to check on him to be sure he is indeed, good and dead. I leave him there, on the floor, because I cannot even deal with his dead body. When my son came home from school, I made him put the spider in a ziploc bag, because I knew no one would believe me when I told them how BIG this spider was. I showed it off for a couple of weeks to any non believers. How sick am I?

Oh, and those carpet installers? I now know why there were snickering leaving my house. It pains me to think of that spider in my bedroom, maybe even in my bed. If that had happened, I'd be typing this from the local Psychiatric Hospital.