Ok, the promised spider story... a few days after we got here, I decided to do some laundry. The laundry room is downstairs in a semi-finished basement. I was switching the wet laundry from the washer into the dryer when a GIANT HAIRY spider came running, and I mean RUNNING out from behind the washing machine straight at me. It JUMPED from the wall and into the washing machine with it's legs all splayed out as wide as they could go (about the size of my palm) - terrifying because I was bent over the machine with my arm in it at the time and it flew right past my face! I ran upstairs screaming bloody murder (luckily didn't wake the kids) and Brad was laughing because he thought I'd seen a mouse (the owners warned us they'd had a little mouse problem, but thought they were all gone). No way! This was WORSE than a little ol' mouse! I made Brad come downstairs to get the rest of the laundry out - that spider was in there somewhere! He put on his heavy work gloves to do it too. After he'd pulled all the laundry out and put it in the dryer, he still hadn't found the spider. I was worried that it was buried in the clothes, and that it's hairy dead body was going to fall out of the dryer on me if I ran it.... we went ahead and started the water in the washing machine just to make sure the spider was out, and sure enough it had been hiding under the agitator and came running back out. Brad then caught it in a bowl and left it in there to drown.
After some searching on the internet though, I realized that this was not a poisonous spider as I'd feared. It was just a Wolf Spider - terrifying but basically harmless. I also read that they get aggressive when they have an eggsac or young to protect. My dad said it was TRYING to scare ME away. So part of me is terrified that there are more little Wolfies waiting to fly at me during laundry time, and part of me feels HORRIBLE that I murdered a mother protecting her young. We should have just let it go outside - but at the time I thought for sure it was a brown recluse and was going to kill us all....
5 comments:
i saw the title and was seriously afraid to click on the post - i was sure you'd have a picture. i am so scared of spiders that i can't even look at a picture!!!! (were you there at my birthday party when amy leuken brought in that tarantula in a styrofoam cup and it started crawling out and brad rassmussen got scared and the cup AND THE SPIDER went flying?!?!?)
so i did not read your post for fear that i might have a spider-induced panic attack. but i was brave enough to scroll down far enough to where there were no more pictures and click on the comment link. SO BRAVE!!!
Dude, the minute that spider invaded your house, she was the attacker! You were merely defending yourself, your family, and your sanity by drowning her out. Maybe now the spiders will stay outside where they belong!
I'm impressed that you handled it so well. I think I would've just started crying and slumped into a ball.
rofl. We found a brown triangulated cobweb spider recently. Dale caught it and kept it in his cricket cage while we tried to figure out what it was. It has a butt like a black widow, but apparently they eat black widows, so we let him go outside.
Yuck...we have those like crazy here in Texas and they are huge! Glad you guys made the move ok. Your kids are so dang cute....I can't believe how big they are getting. Hope you are getting things settled....it is so hard unpacking with little ones.
He He!!! Reminds me of the spider incident at girls camp once upon a time. Where was your ever faithful flashlight to smash it? Now that would have been viral video worthy!!!!
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