Sean, bless his heart, has been bearing the brunt of this hefty task, which includes all of the outside and foundation spraying. This charge involves tackling the Amazon Spider Fortress, also known as the garage, and leading the fight in the Kitchen Ant Wars. He is truly kicking ass, and he would be taking names, if these bugs had names, or if we gave a shit that they had names.
I'd like to state that I haven't been entirely useless in the battle. I have played the supporting role of the Screaming-From-A-Safe-Distance Damsel-In-Distress. I'm also skilled at taking down lone rogues that pop up in random places in the house by spraying them with an extremely superfluous amount of Hot Shot Naturals.
One afternoon, we set out to run some errands, only to find that the biggest wood spider I've ever seen had built a web spanning between our vehicles. This thing seriously had a body (just the body!) the size of a marble, and if this were Charlotte's Web, the web wouldn't be saying "Terrific"; it would be saying, "Fuck You, and Your Trip to Autozone". God knows it was big enough.
At the sight of this mocking monstrosity, we both sprung into action. I played my part beautifully, diving into the opposite car door from the spider, cowering and shouting my support for Sean, who vanquished the beast by unloading a blitzkreig of Liquid Spider Death on it's ass and everything within a five foot radius.
After the epic battle, I sung my hero's praises. I told him he was at least twice as badass as John Goodman in Arachnophobia, and just as handsome!
5 comments:
I don't have as many problems, or more than usual this year, with spiders-but research and know how to identify the "brown recluse spider{?} I worked with someone years back that had been bitten on the hand by one of these characters. I don't know if he was particularly allergic, but hew asn't faking-you could see the discolration/swelling going up his forearm for multiple months. He said he didn't even feel the bite, and it just looked like a mosquito bite until the toxins really got rolling. Actually now that I am telling this story, I AM freaking myself out, and will be calling Dale Gribble from "king of the Hill" immediately...and this f'in stink bug is still on my desk...just lookin' at me funny...
I have researched and I know how to identify the brown recluse and the black widows. We actually have very few instances of brown recluse bite in this area - it mainly is from VA down. Black widows are considered the only venomous spider resident of this state, but none of the spiders we've seen fit either bill.
We have taken the "bug wars" into our own hands, and so far have come up pretty optimistic. When we moved in, there were spider eggs sacs in some of the windows, and ants in the kitchen, and it seems we have eradicated both. We see a few here and there, but we live in the country, so it is expected.
I stomped a rather hairy big 8 leg critter at work today.
I was bitten by a Brown Recluse about 15 years ago. It bit me on the top of my foot and my leg swelled up to the calf. It swelled up so big all the skin peeled off from my toes to my knee almost.
I also had not realized that I was bitten, it just itched at first until I had red lines running up my leg the next day.
TC..those are the symptoms indeed-the guy I knew was actually told there was a 10% chance or so he may lose the hand...which I believe was his dominant hand-I think massive doses of IV antibiotics or something saved him, but needless to say golf/bowling/darts, even writing, was screwed for him for a significant period of time.
They gave me two different antibiotics. One was a massive dose of something to take the first two days and another to take for a longer period of time.
Dr also told me if the swelling didn't go down in about 30 hours I was going to have to be admitted to the hospital.
It was the only time I ever called the Dr office and they asked me how fast I could get there!
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