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!
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
I’m the spider killer in my house, and at work, too. Never had a problem with the killing part. Just thinning the herd. But recently, there was this HUGE spider that crawled upon the warm towels I was folding fresh from the dryer. The thing was so huge that I thought it a shame to kill it. (plus it was sitting on a soft stack of towels. too messy) So I trapped it in a jar, and slid some cardboard under the jar. In the process, the porr guy lost a couple legs, so I held him over night for observation. He seemed fine in the morning, so I released him into the garden, where he resumed his duties of removing the pests from my tomatoes and cucumbers.
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.
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.
Lol that’s a really funny picture Lillain :D
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?
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.
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.
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….
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
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.
that’s sort of my list of qualities in a husband too (still looking for him) :)
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…
is it sad that if i would have done something like this – i would have laughed and just watched the sucker suffer and burn to death? I am deathly afraid of spiders (arachniphobia at its worst) so i wouldnt have given a crap. lol I know in the “circle of life” we need spiders, blah blah blah.. but they can go live in someone else’s house for all i care. leave me the HECK alone. thank you so much. hahaha ;)
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
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.
A fly never seems to bother me, I just can’t get use to spiders though for some reason.
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?
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!
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!).
I love spiders but … someone, anyone, PLEASE COME AND KILL MY MICE!
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.
I killed a roach that climbed up my bathtub drain the other day. It was disgusting I am originally from MN and moved to AZ so the increased amount of bugs is taking some getting used to. I miss living with my parents because my dad would always kill the insects and spiders!
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!
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!
I HATE spiders. I wish I could have someone like that. i would pay then $1 every spider they kill!!
Is Dee by any chance the roommate who wears sandals in a storm?
I like spiders, just from far away, like my mom says. I cannot, I repeat CANNOT kill a spider with a Kleenex it absolutely terrifies me! I mean common, don’t you get squeamish when you’re crouching down in a defiant stance, tissue bunched up in hand and you just get that thought. You know what I’m talking about. What if it crawls from under the tissue and attacks me? What if it jumps on my face? What if it’s too big? I mean I get these thoughts and then I run for the sneaker, and I test the weight in my hand aim and toss, at the seemingly deadly spider.
And then out pops the spider from under your useless shoe! I can’t help it, I run, run far away and I know I’m overreacting, but its scary, its terrifying and I can’t look back, so its up to my last resort: my dad! Good ‘ole daddio! Yes I’m that much of a dork, go ahead laugh it up, but its true!
Unfortunately, I am of the belief that all things are created equal and if I am to kill something it is to be for food. So to have to feel that crunchy, squishy, leggy body of a spider underneath the barrier of kleenex THEN TO EAT IT is just way too much for me to handle. When I still lived with my parents my room was in the basement which meant LOTS of spiders…and because both my Dad and my brothers would get sick of my whining and ignore me I’d have to deal with spidies myself with nothing more than a jar and a piece of paper.
But now I’ve moved into the top floor of a 17 storey building and I tell you it is sheer bliss.
I too, am the one in my household who takes care of spiders, but I won’t kill anything that isn’t poisonous, and therefore harmful; I just release the vast majority of spiders instead.
I can identify most spiders that live around my house, and the majority are completely harmless (thank you, New England), but if I can’t identify it I’ll catch it in a clear glass and try to look up what type of spider it is, and then decide from there whether or not I need to kill it, or if I can just be a good person and let it go. :D
I used to live in Malaysia and there were tons of spiders in our house. Our maid was Indonesian, and the best housekeeper EVER! So I asked her to kill the spiders please, as they were starting to multiply over my bed and I was afraid that they would fall on my face at night and bite me.
She explained that spiders were God’s creatures too. She did kill the spiders, but she would always say a prayer first, asking God to forgive her for killing one of His perfect creations. (Actually, she would try to catch them first, and scoop them outside the house if at all possible.)
It was kinda awesome living with someone who DID mind killing spiders.
I’m cracking up with all these comments! I’m the spider killer in my house (and mouse catcher, if it comes to that), and it totally depends on the size of the spider as to whether it’s not a big deal or a holy terror. I do feel bad for the little ones but if I catch one on a kleenex I CANNOT take a chance that it’ll get out of the kleenex and crawl on my arm. So they get flushed – regretfully.
If the spider gets to be a certain size – like maybe the size of a dime or even smaller – that’s a whole different story. Some primal fear takes over and I can barely manage to attack it with a boot – let alone pick up the slippery mess afterwards. What is it about a creature with 8 legs that can be so freaky?
Mind you, my worst experiences were definitely with cockroaches in an apartment in Montreal – I woke up in the night with one crawling on my arm. FREAK OUT!!
I am terribly afraid of spiders. I don´t mind the small ones, but once they get past a certain size I just can´t deal with them. My instinct is to stand on a table and scream, but that wouldn´t be much help. I don´t mind mice or rats and I chase them away without a thought but spiders…. bleh…
Worse than a spider sitting on the wall though is a spider that´s NOT sitting on the wall ANYMORE. Really. It means it has gone somewhere and you have no idea where, might as well be crawling up the legs of your chair…
Luckily I have a husband. He isn´t a big fan of spiders either, but he knows his jobs and gets them out. The only problem is when he is not around. One time I had to hoover up the spider and leave the hoover turned on for 4 hours until my husband came home, just because I was afraid it would crawl out again.
I can deal with the spider if its on the wall…but the minute that guy gets to the ceiling…..
Oh man! These are some hilarious comments! I completely agree though, spiders are freaky! I definetely don’t like to be the one to kill them. Thanks to all the spider killers out there! Woot Woot!
I gotta tell you , the picture of that spider at the top of the page made me hypervehntlate. I am so terrified of spiders that if something is used to kill them, I throw it out, its contaminated.
I have knocked on my neighbor’s doors, begging them to KILL IT KILL IT!!!! if my husband isn;t home.
that is awesome! i hope i marry a guy that will do this for me and not the other way around if so i will not be amused
I moved my bedroom from upstairs to in the basement of my house, and I realized how much of a bug problem there is in the summer. I would prefer not to kill them, but there are so many of them. Usually, if it’s another type of bug (earwigs, EWWW) I’ll kill it, but if it’s a spider I’ll leave it alone unless the situation gets out of hand.
Narissa – define ‘situation gets out of hand’… It’s just some cute little spiders :)
The best is living with a cat who likes to eat spiders. That way the cat gets a treat and the spider’s death is not in vain. Go Seymour!!!
I, too, am TERRIFIED of spiders. We used to get really big (quarter-sized), hairy, black spiders in our house. YIKES! Sometimes, if my husband wasn’t home, I’d call my neighbour to come over and kill them.
One night, very late, I had no choice but to kill it myself. So… I got one of my husband’s shoes, put it on my foot and stepped on the enormous spider, screaming the whole time. Of course, I just stepped out of the shoe and left it there for my husband to get in the morning.
Unfortunately, I forgot about it. Later that next day, my two year old had something in his mouth. I hadn’t given him any food lately, so of course, I pried his mouth open. Much to my horror, he was happily chewing on the spider!!!!!!!
Needless to say, I never forgot to have my husband get rid of the carcasses again.
EEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YUCKKKKKK!!!! i can almost taste the spider myself with the juice and everything
Thinking about the little arachnids makes me shiver.
I have never murdered a spider, intentional or unintentional, and never plan to.
Spiders are the #1 on my list of hated things! I am absoloutely terrified of them.
Especially those HUMONGOUS long-legs in the summer. Eeeeeek!
i no i h8 spiders and ppl r always going “oh its not doing anything to u anyway” and im like “i dont care i want it dead”
I am scared of spiders. I am more scared of killing them.
So the strategy is
1)turn all the lights on to an outside path
2)open all the doors
30get a cd spindle case and put over spider
4) move case onto paper
5)CAREFULLY move case and paper to door
6)throw case and paper outside
7)find spider and retrieve the case and paper while watching it
8)close door.
Turkiyenin en nadide sehri eskisehir hakkinda en zengin bilgiler ve eskisehir rehberi.
having the dreadful experience of being bit by the hobo spiders twice, I’ll kill every spider I see now! learned spiders hate horse chestnuts, so the house has them everwhere and since, hardly as spider seen and no bites!
well with all this rain, need more chestnuts to rule!
Whenever my grandma sees a spider, she always tells it “If I see you the next time I walk past, you’re a goner!” and of course, the spider has almost always moved by the time she’s in that room again. If it’s still there, she takes it to the backyard and let’s it go. She used to kill them, but she’s gotten soft in her old age.
I am not scared of spiders…but I would love to live with someone who is not scared to shoo the LIZARDS away…I can’t stay inn the same room when I see a lizard…
i wouldnt kill them because i love them <3 haha ;)
My first date with my current boyfriend was a bbq for a friend’s birthday. He killed 2 spiders for me. We’ve been together for 15 months now, and I never forget how he saved me from those evil creatures!