Story Weekend: Spiders
I was out of town last week and when I returned home, I drove my car out of the garage only to discover it was covered in cobwebs and a million baby spiders! Shudder. We live in the woods and this is the price we pay. If you’ve “known” me long enough, you might remember the baby spider infestation in my old car, but this was far worse (although I didn’t see any inside the car this time, fingers crossed). I drove directly to the car wash–the one where they scrub and shine the outside and vacuum the inside. I was the only car there, since it’s pine pollen season and anyone in her right mind knows that if you wash your car, it will be clean for about five minutes before returning to neon yellow–the color of all vehicles this time of year in North Carolina. Anyhow, my car is now very yellow because I’m leaving it outside, afraid to put it back in the garage. Our pest guy can’t come for another week, and anyway, spiders are tough to get rid of. (Don’t tell me how they’re good for the environment, please. I’m happy to let them live in their environment–even in my house to a certain extent–but my tolerance stops at my car.
I’d love to hear your spider story. We had a very quiet Story Weekend last week–I never know what topic will spark your imagination and what won’t. Surely, though, everyone has a spider story!
If you’re new to Story Weekend, here’s how it works: I pick a theme and you share something from your life that relates to that theme, however you interpret it. Thanks to all of you who’ve been contributing. As always, there are a few “rules”:
▪ The story must be true
▪ Try to keep it under 100 words. Embrace the challenge! That’s about six or seven lines in the comment form. I want others to read your story, and most people tend to skip if it’s too long. I know how tough it is to “write tight” but I hope you’ll accept this as a challenge. Happy writing!
I remember going shopping with my teenage daughter and a huge spider dropped from the ceiling in between us. I screeched for her to kill it and she started screaming. I pulled off the road into a bank parking lot and we both jumped out of the car leaving our doors open. We stood there for 30 minutes hoping the spider would walk out and be on his way … afraid to go back inside the car. We had to buck up and go home. She sat in the back seat, huddled up in a ball with her hoodie over her head while I had to drive 20 minutes home on the highway scared to death it would come out of hiding. I am STILL terrified of spiders in the car to this day.
Several years ago I used to babysit for my grandchildren at their house. One early morning I opened their gate to the backyard and walked right into a spiderweb with many baby spiders in it. The babies were in my hair. I ran into my daughter’s house screaming and ran right to the bathroom sink and put my head right under the faucet and turned it on and washed those spiders out. It was a “hair-o-ing experience that I will never forget.
I remember being at sleep away camp as a child and we did an overnight in the woods. We were not in tents but in sleeping bags under the stars. I awoke early and lifted myself up from my stomach and to my horror noticed a big spider creeping along right where I had been sleeping. I flew out of that sleeping bag and was the first one in line to board the bus back to our camp! To this day I still don’t like spiders!!
I haven’t written in story weekend for awhile and just getting into The Good Father. Well I still remember my spider story from maybe no more than 3 years ago. It makes me laugh to think of it. I hate any bug yet I was so calm when my friend started freaking out.
Me and my friend were heading somewhere to do an interview project. some people know that I was in a car accident and I was explaining to my friend what had happened, well were driving and she starts freaking about a spider. so were driving down the street where the river is. So we pull into one of the parking lots and she gets out of the car and is trying to get the spider onto a clipboard and starts screaming at me about the spider. I finally kill it and we continue on our ride. On the way home one is one the dashboard so she pulls into a random driveway and starts freaking out again. she gets the spider out of the car and tells me she’s going to kill her husband when she gets home. It was pretty funny usually I hate the things but I tend be more calm when others start freaking out.
How timely is this…last night when I was home alone, (because my husband is now working nights), a huge black spider came walking out of a corner. I called him at work, wanting to know where the insect spray was, of course we were either out of it,or he had no idea where it was.
So one of the ladies he works with figured out what he was talking to me about and she recommended I use hairspray, now mind you its not the cheap stuff I use. I pulled it out and sprayed away with my $17 bottle of hairspray and you guessed it, the sucker did not respond to that. So I went out to the garage just to see what might be out there, I found a can of flying insect spray figuring I had nothing to lose I brought that in to try. I have to tell you, that was one strong spider, he refused to give up the ship until I finally had him drowned in a pool of that spray, whew what a night ! When my husband came home this morning I gave him the job of handling the carcass that was behind the couch. And I reminded him, I married him to take care of any spiders in our home !
Debb, when I called the pest company today, she said spiders are almost impossible to kill with the pesticides. They have to be hit directly, as you discovered, and even that may not work.
My husband and I went to Beaver’s Bend in Oklahoma for a quick weekend getaway. We played golf one afternoon and on about the 9th green, there was a tarantula walking towards my golf ball! It was so odd and out of place in the middle of the day! Thankfully, he wandered off but it still gives me chills and I could not stop thinking about that big, hairy monstrosity all night!
Whitney, are you from Oklahoma? I´ve never played golf at Beaver Bend, but we’ve played at Roman Nose….There we didn’t worry about spiders, but you had to be careful when looking for your ball, as it might have landed with the snakes. I loved playing there.
When I was a kid I had a play kitchen. In the summer times we’d bring it out to the backyard sometimes. One particularly nice weekend with no rain we decided to leave it out there all weekend before bringing it back inside. A couple days later my playroom was infested with spiders. In the few days outside a spider had laid a bunch of little spider eggs inside the play kitchen and we didn’t notice. There were spiders crawling in all my toys and it took a lot of spraying and a lot of cleanup to get rid of them! My dad had to do this since the rest of us wouldn’t even go near the room!
okay, this hits the top of the scale for horror! Yuch!
When I was in second grade my best friend had all the great books, great for second grade that is. I had to read whatever I found in the library when left on my own to browse. Every time I went the great books were always out and I didn’t know you could reserve a book. So there I was, left taking secretive looks at “D’s books when she left her room to go to the bathroom. I knew the cover of each intimately but never had a chance to read them. It never dawned on this introverted child to ask someone to buy them for me, but when I got my first paycheck as an executive with AT&T the first book I bought was Charlotte’s Web.
Okay, somebody has to speak up for spiders – they’re more scared of you than you could ever be of them. The wand of your vacuum cleaner works better than pesticides if you really must dispose of recently hatched spiderlings. I may vacuum up any of the cobweb types that set up housekeeping where walls meet ceilings, but I scoop up wolf, lynx and hunting spiders with a butterfly net or trap them under a clear plastic cup and a sheet of paper, then put them back outside where they can hunt ticks and fleas and mosquitoes and yellow jackets. If you aren’t up to that, then keep a fly swatter handy!
Margaret, you’re probably right about the vacuum, but when I saw my car covered in the babies, I remembered my car infestation of a couple of years ago and wanted to get scrubbed inside and out.
Oh, there are so many spider stories! I swear, they have a spiders union to hunt out the people who are terrified. One summer I lived in a small town up north in Ontario and had a blow up mates on the floor for a bed. I shook it out every night before being on, and twice found a spider in my sheets. In the same apartment I got trapped in the bathroom because suddenly a fat orange and black striped spider was in the doorway. As for at home, I once tilted my head back in the tub to wet my hair, and noticed one hanging by the corner of the tub just ches away. There are dozens more stories, at least! Oh, when counting inventory at work, I’ve had babies drop off the I’m counting. Pretty sure I didnt stock fake flowers or gummy candies (in the green bags only) for months after those incidents!
Bad spelling, yikes! Typing on a phone, sorry 🙁
When I was a young woman in the Air Force, I lived in Okinawa. There was a small tree near a foot bridge I had to cross to go to work. For several weeks there was this giant spider hung right over the entrance to the bridge about 5 feet above my head. I would hold my breath and run like crazy and always looked back to make sure he hadn’t fallen on me. Ugh, I don’t know why we never did anything about it, but one day he just disappeared. I still looked though, to make sure he just wasn’t waiting for an unsuspecting person to walk by and pounce.
If it was an orb weaver, Barb, you had nothing to fear. They have very poor eyesight, probably didn’t know you were there. Plus, they never willingly leave the web unless scared off. Also, “he” was probably a “she.”