It’s great living with someone who doesn’t mind killing spiders.
In college we would call upon our roommate Dee to take care of the job. It was almost too easy, too. “Dee!,” we’d yell from the couch, lazily flipping channels while eating Chef Boyardee, “Spider.” And that was it, really. Sure enough, every time, Dee’s bedroom door would crack open, his lumbering frame would cast long shadows down the hall, and he’d step out slowly, raise his eyebrows, and then just go about taking care of business. I always admired his quiet, serious approach to the whole thing. No exchange of pleasantries, no asking for help, no mentioning it later. It was just business with him. Case closed, open and shut. He’d finish up and go back to studying in his room like nothing happened. Life was good.
Then I got married and the role of Spider Killer was delegated to me. It’s a fair arrangement and I don’t mind the responsibility, but I have to tell you: it’s a different story when you’re the one calmly grabbing a Kleenex from the bathroom on demand, walking over to the spider, squishing it to smithereens, and then flushing it down the toilet to seal the deal. Because that’s when it really hits home. That’s when you first feel the weight of the spidercide resting squarely on your conscience. It’s there and you know it. Eventually you just get numb.
I miss living with Dee. I think I took his role for granted for too long. Looking back, I just want to tell you now: if you currently live with someone who takes care of your spiders, thank them. Hug them. Smile and say you appreciate the good work they’re doing. Because let me tell you, one day you might be called upon to take their place, and only then will you see what they go through each and every time a Daddy Long-Legs scurries up a wall.
So then, altogether now. Let’s hear it for them. Living with someone who doesn’t mind killing spiders?
AWESOME!
24 Comments
August 7, 2008 at 1:33 am
Hey,
I love your blog, first of all. So much fun. :) But I have to add my two cents to this one. I’m the one-who-deals-with-spiders in my house. I do it calmly, without much fanfare. Big, little, poisonous, harmless, fast, slow, mean, benign… I deal with all those eight legged friends.
But, I don’t kill them. I capture them and set them free a goodly distance from the house – so they can continue doing their good bug eating work. So, while it is indeed awesome to live with someone who does the spider work for you – I’d argue it’s equally awesome if they don’t kill them. :)
Eric
http://www.ericgrey.com
August 9, 2008 at 5:20 pm
I am in college now and my roommate and I are too girly to kill spiders. So we live in a din of spiders because he is scared of spiders and I don’t want to kill something that isn’t bothering me. It’s a vicious thing, the spider-killing business.
August 12, 2008 at 6:44 am
I do regret to admit that my house is quite weird with killing spiders.
I am terrified of the wretched little creatures.
I let out a loud high pitched scream and someone will come running.
My mother lets the spiders outside go.
My brother squishes them with his hand(no matter how big the spider)
My other brother stares at the thing and refuses to go near it.
My older sister doesn’t bother and walks away.
My younger sisters however stand and freak out with me.
Ah yes the wonders of spiders and siblings.
August 12, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I try not to ever kill spiders because of the obvious bad karma. I’m a buddhist, so my faith does not allow me to kill. I do eat a lot of meat and kill every OTHER fucking bug that happens to annoy me, however, but hey, it’s not like I’m enlightened RIGHT NOW, am I? Exactly. So, about those spiders.. Never kill’em, I catch them. And then I try to keep them alive under a glass or something for as long as possible, feeding them water and fruit flies that I happen to catch. Like, it’s not bad karma if the SPIDER is the one doin’ the killing, right? That’s HIS bad karma. No wonder he was reborn a spider, what with all the killing and whatnot. They generally die after some time, but you can’t pin that on me either. I was TRYING to keep the little guy alive. HE was the one that couldn’t handle the pressure, wasn’t it? Anyway, the whole point is to be able to raise an army of spiders completely devoted to me and my cause, which I cannot reveal at the time because of my religious beliefs as mentioned before. It involves scaring people. And world domination. But what grand scheme doesn’t?
August 13, 2008 at 5:29 pm
What’s the best way to kill them, though? I like to construct elaborate traps, and then watch as inevitability slowly crushes their dreams and life becomes a desperate scrabble for survival.
This one time I tried to emulate the entire plot of Saw II, but my sister wouldn’t let me borrow her dollhouse.
August 31, 2008 at 10:42 pm
There was a time when we let spiders go outside. But after a wet summer last year we were over run by arachnids and then a visiting friend was bitten by a Brown Recluse. Since that point I have become a God of Death in the Kingdom of Spiders. I generally just use my hand (note: always smash from the rear). There is an indeterminate point based on the size/venomous potential of the spider at which I switch to a flat smashing surface to do the job. I refrain from killing almost any animal, but spiders they get no quarter.
October 11, 2008 at 2:50 am
Spiders I do not mind, kinda like the little buggers actually. Owned a tarantula named Slash in the late 80’s…(GNR fan) Would let him run around the house and loved watching people freak the fuck out.
Now a cockroach/waterbug, GOD!!! I turn into a crying, screaming mass of hysteria. Whats really bad is my hubby is as scared of them as I am, the cats too lazy, and the dogs could care less. Yuck….even thinking about them makes me shiver….
December 5, 2008 at 1:29 am
Daddy-long-legs are cool spiders. They supposedly eat redback spiders. Redbacks supposedly live in dark areas like under logs, in crevices and under the rim of pot plants. However, we lived in one place where the redbacks liked the dark, didn’t mind the light and co-existed quite happily with the daddy-long-legs.
While redbacks are nasty, nasty spiders, even they aren’t as scary as bird-eating ones, a la…
http://www.cairns.com.au/article/2008/10/23/11601_local-news.html
December 18, 2008 at 4:49 am
Spider Killing was officially on my list of qualities in a husband. It went tall, funny, willing to kill spiders, likes animals, etc…
Seriously it’s like you read my mind sometimes.
November 19, 2009 at 10:41 pm
that’s sort of my list of qualities in a husband too (still looking for him) :)
December 28, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I am the official spider smoosher in my house. We have wood spiders down here….hairy and they jump. They do not last with my slipper of death….
Had one in my apartment when I lived in Mississippi. Husband was not home and this sucker was in my bathtub….I sprayed him with hairspray, which froze him for a few seconds. Unfortunately, my Tasha cat knocked a candle into the tub and the hairspray caught fire….we had a flaming spider racing around the tub…..I took pity on the poor arachnid and soaked him with water when he hit the drain area….he rested in pieces…
January 1, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Yeah at our current apartment we get some nasty, gnarly fat black spiders, and it comes to the point we found their nests and regurlarly torch them, but one was so bad we couldn’t smash him he was so quick so out came the spray paint and lighter, he proceeded to run while on fire but we stomped his flamin ass
January 22, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Not only do I not mind dealing with the spiders, I find it highly amusing that everyone else here goes batshit about them.
So it usually boils down to “Get it yourself!” while I’m laughing at them. And by the time I finally cave and grab some paper, the little bugger’s usually scampered off and hid. And a spider I can’t see is officially Too Much Effort.
February 2, 2009 at 3:05 am
A fly never seems to bother me, I just can’t get use to spiders though for some reason.
February 7, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Spiders OFTEN creep me out… BUT, living in southern Ontario, the types of spiders we encounter are no threat to anyone or anything except (maybe) your peace of mind. If this were Florida, or Cairnes (like Laetitia’s link :|:|:|:|) I would be THOROUGHLY freaked out!
Actually, last night as I went to empty my not-so-thimble-sized bladder, I turned on the light to see a spider behind the sink make his way down the web to ensnare a potato bug… Needless to say I finished up quickly and went in for a closer look…
The coolest spider encounter I had was with a buddy in his backyard. He has had wolf-spiders (I think, they build a funnel-like web where they lie deep into the funnel and wait for bugs to drop into the web and POUNCE on them!) in his backyard for years, so one day we went about catching whatever bugs we could to feed it. After about an hour we quit, figuring this particular spider will be full for ages… Sometimes we can be humanitarians,…or spideritarians?
March 31, 2009 at 9:07 pm
Spiders are one of the few perks of living on the 7th floor of my dorm building. Neither me nor my roommate would want to kill spiders, but it doesn’t matter because they can’t climb 7 stories off the ground anyway!
April 27, 2009 at 4:48 pm
I am so glad to have a good spider killer on hand. For me it’s not so much I hate them…I have terrible arachnophobia and it feels like life or death when there is a spider near me. It’s an uncontrollable fear. While I understand it is annoying for others to deal with, I urge those who do not have this fear to be kind to those who do. Laughing at us while we cower (or in my case cry) in fear might seem fun to you but it is so scary for us. I know it seems stupid to be so afraid of something that is so much smaller than us, but really…it’s terrifying. Sorry to be a debbie downer, I just know from my own personal experiences how hard it is to deal with a phobia and have people laugh at you for it.
Thanks to all the spider killers (or catchers!).
May 13, 2009 at 4:49 pm
I love spiders but … someone, anyone, PLEASE COME AND KILL MY MICE!
May 14, 2009 at 12:29 am
Its cockroaches in my house, and we have a designated cockroach-trapper. I can’t handle squishing them because of the awful crunch they make, so we trap them under glasses and wait until they die. (Usually this takes about a week – the fuckers will play dead so you have to shake the glass every once in awhile to make sure they’re good and dead.)
There was one in my bathroom last night and the DCT wasn’t home. And when I say “in my bathroom” I mean “ON MY HEAD UNTIL I SCREAMED AND SWATTED IT OFF”. Stealthy motherfuckers – I was just getting ready for bed, braiding my hairandOHMYGODISTHATAFUCKINGCOCKROACHONMYHEAD??????
That one didn’t deserve to live, so I got the Raid, drowned the roach in it, and then trapped it under a glass for good measure.
June 30, 2009 at 1:35 pm
I think I’m weird, because I don’t like spiders in my house, and I will kill it if I must, but outside I like to catch flies and feed them to the spiders, and I used to work at a place called Science North and I used to love petting the tarantula’s, along with all the other insects!! but when it comes to my home, all bugs must stay out!
October 21, 2009 at 4:27 pm
[...] #996 Living with someone who doesn’t mind killing spiders [...]
November 17, 2009 at 10:51 pm
last year, I used to live at home with 4 brothers…all I had to do was yell, “SPIDER!” and one of my brothers would come kill it for me without complaint :)
it was AWESOME!
December 17, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I HATE spiders. I wish I could have someone like that. i would pay then $1 every spider they kill!!
December 23, 2009 at 11:48 pm
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