Why Can't ALL Spiders be More Like Charolette?

I drove my newly repaired car to work today. When I bought it, the previous owner was a smoker. After a few weeks of dryer sheet and Febreeze, I was finally able to get most of the smoke smell out...that is, until I parked it for a week in my garage waiting for the bumper repair. After that first week, I went out to get my iPod, and just opening the door about knocked me over. The smoke smell was back, with a vengeance. Grrrrrr. So....I opened the sun roof, allowing it to air out as it sat and waited some more.

Skip ahead two weeks (to this morning).....the smoke smell is still there, but it's not as bad. Guess it's back to dryer sheet and Febreeze - unless anyone has a better idea?? As I'm pulling out of the garage, I notice cobwebs....lots of them. It seems as though 'someone' decided to take up temporary residence in my car....spinning its webs from the radio, to the gear shift, down to the cup holder. I stopped the car....and scanned the area for those pesky web spinner(s). My visual search turned up zilch. I don't know what I was expecting to see....little beady eyes staring at me with hatred....maybe eight sets of brass knuckles clicking for intimidation....heck I don't know. But since I saw nothing, I knocked the webs down, gathered my wits (I HATE spiders) and drove to work.

I have this rule in life...if you're a spider and you're outside my house (and my car, thank you very much)...you are free to live. If you enter my house (or car), you are fair game. You are trespassing!!!! I have, in the past, had a tendency to smash such trespassers on the wall, and leave them there are a warning to others. Anymore, I just try to catch you and take you outside. The first week that we lived in our house, I was watching TV. All of a sudden, this spider comes down from the ceiling, right into my eyesight path to the TV. Scared the crap out of me. It was like 2 feet in front of my face, just hanging there. Then it would climb back up it's web for a little while....only to come back down again a few minutes later. No one was home, so I was free to squeal like a girl.....slink off of the couch, and devise a plan for removal. With Tupperware container in hand, I went in for the capture...but it jumped a little when I tried to get it. Which only made me hit the web, without capturing the beast. So now...there's a SWINGING spider in my living room. I did eventually catch the dang thing and throw it outside. Ugh!!!

When I was in high school....and still living at home...there was one spider weekend I'll never forget. I could hear my mom in her bedroom, calling for me to come see her. As I got nearer to her room, she stopped talking, mid sentence. As I step into the room to see what was wrong...I see she's frozen in place, standing in the middle of the bedroom...staring into space. More specifically, staring into the space above my head. She was white as a sheet, and kinda pointing. I decided standing under whatever it was, wasn't a good idea...so I ducked into the bedroom with her.

When I turned around to see what she was looking at...I was...well....confused at first. What the HECK is that thing????? On the ceiling, immediately above where I had just been standing, was a very large spider.....dragging something along with her. Mom was still frozen, and obviously not going to be take action....so I stepped in for a closer inspection. OH MY GOD!!!!! It's a egg sack....baseball sized....gross looking....and it was squirming. You heard me...squirming!!! That thing was FULL of babies...and ready to explode any second. Yikes!! Now what????

I ran into the bathroom - because there was NO WAY I was leaving the bedroom. I'd have to walk under it...it's right inside the door, we were trapped in here! Anyway, I'm in the bathroom...looking for weapons. I came running out of the bathroom with a can large can of aerosol hairspray. AquaNet to be exact.

As I stepped forward to commence saturation, the baseball sized bag of terror starting to open. Tiny little spiders were coming out. Oh hell no!!!!! I started spraying anything that moved. Mama wasn't happy, the babies were sticking to the ceiling....I was squealing like a girl. Mom just stood there with a look of horror on her face.

About that time, Dad walks in the front door. He comes running down the hallway, to see what the source of the noise was. He stops in the doorway, staring from the ceiling.....to us....back to the ceiling. I can only imagine what we looked like!!!!

He took off his shoe, and against my pleading him to stop....SMASHED the egg sack thing against the ceiling. In my mind, I can see his shoe connect and little spiders flying everywhere!!! I see that thing exploding like a hedge apple shot with a .17 rifle.

In reality, the thick layer of AquaNet slime saved us. Everything was stuck together in a large mass...and came crashing to the carpeted floor with a thud. As quick as I could, I hurdled over the mess...ran for the broom closet....grabbed the dust pan and came back to the wreckage. Dad used his shoe to scrap up the mess into the dustpan, and we threw it all out the backdoor. We then sprayed the carpet with every can of bug killer we could find. Carpet is replaceable, sleeping in that room without nightmares was our goal!!! Poor mom! Poor mama spider....had she known that two raving lunatics were about to attack her and all her young, she would have picked a better place to drag that little sack of horrors. (hehe)

OK, no more spider talk...it's giving me the willies! :-)