Monday, July 24, 2006

Close Encounters

Sometimes we don't know how fragile our little existence really is. I mean, we can be so dangerously close to death, and not have any awareness of it at the time. But boy, when it actually is realized, it's a shattering sort of feeling that leaves you trembling.

This morning Jonas and I took our basket and a pair of scissors out to the yard to collect some basil. You see, the basil plants were planted right alongside the tomatoes, and they're really taking over the space and choking the tomatoes. So I figured we'd pretty much chop them back to nothing and make pesto out of it. Pesto is one of those great things that freezes well and is great with lots of different things- chicken, pasta, bread... you get the picture.

So, out we go, and we spend a good twenty minutes or so playing around in the basil. I would trim it and toss it on the ground and Jonas would collect it and stack it all neatly in the basket.

With that done, we set the basket on the porch and went to play in the hose while watering the squash and zucchini.

I love watching him play in the water- the way he laughs and giggles when the spray lands on his face. I love that full-belly laugh when he turns the hose on me without warning. Heck, I just love the kid!

So, thoroughly drenched, we return to the porch, I strip off his soaking wet clothes and shoes, gather him up in my arms, grab the basket of basil and plop it right on his belly and carry the whole bundle inside.

We make a pit stop in the kitchen to drop off the basil, and then we go get changed.

After getting into dry clothes and getting J a drink, I set to work cleaning and de-stemming the basil. Basically this means taking the long stems from the basket, stripping the leaves off into one side of the sink that's full of cold water, and tossing the stems and bruised leaves in the other side.

So I'm merrily leaf stripping and Jonas is playing with his fire truck at my feet when I look over into the stem side of the sink and OH MY FREAKING GOD! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT CRAWLING AROUND IN THERE! A big, mean, angry black widow spider. *EEEEEKKK*

While my brother my tell you otherwise, I'm not really all that squeamish about bugs. It comes with living down here in the great swamp state where if it has less than six legs it's probably not native. But to have something that has venom 15 times more deadly than a rattlesnake's sitting there in my kitchen sink is a little creepy.

And in one instant rush my mind starts replaying the whole morning- how J had his hands in the plants with me, how he collected the basil from the ground, how he carried the basket all around the yard, how I had set it on his bare naked little belly while I carried him inside. The realization that, at any moment in there, he could have been fatally bitten was just overwhelming.

I scooped J up as if that spider could somehow jump from the sink all the way across the kitchen and attack him! I deposited him safely in his bedroom asking him to me a good book to read and then began devising my plan of attack.

Of course there's no bug spray in this house- we used it all killing the wasps before the painter came to do the house.

So donning elbow-length rubber gloves and armed with a bottle of hairspray and a piece of 1x2 that we use to secure the sliding glass doors, I set to work killing our unwanted and very scary intruder.

BTW, black-widows are not very susceptible to death by White Rain-ing. Really it did nothing more than piss her off. But it did bring her to the surface of the pile of stems so that I could deliver the fatal blow with my stick, the whole time cringing and acting very much like a girl.

Once I was sure she was dead, which meant pulverizing her body to an unrecognizable pulp in the drain, I cleaned out the sink completely, took the trash immediately outside just in case she wasn't really dead, and finally, sat down on the floor and caught my breath.

Upon further inspection it appears that the entire exterior of my house is currently crawling with black widows. I will be contacting an exterminator in the morning, but meanwhile, I don't think I'll be sleeping a wink.

I've always hated living in Florida, but now I might actually have some decent leverage with which to convince Wil that moving is a good idea. Are there black widows in Portland, Amanda?

8 Comments:

At 9:11 PM, Blogger Doug said...

I agree with the fragility of life comment. While I Mexico, I have a hard time sitting in cabs because I'm tall (6'2") so, I usually sit in the back with body crossed, legs towards the middle (so I can watch the scenery). Anyway, this one day in Zacatecas, I was sitting with my legs towards the door and my body in the middle of the back seat. We're driving along at about 15mph and suddenly, this trucker ahead of us (in the lane beside us) opens his door and it comes smashing through the back window of the cab. It's a weird twist of fate that I wasn't sitting the other way that day because if I was, I'd probably be dead now.

On the spider front, every since I read about the brown recluse, I've been terrified that they're hiding underneath my covers, ready to attack as I'm falling asleep. Of course this is irrational, but still...

 
At 10:09 PM, Blogger Erin said...

I feel this one Ang.

 
At 3:32 AM, Blogger Eve said...

YIKES. I honestly don't have much to say. Oh, and that said, you can't possibly leave Florida... who else will I call to come to my house and kill the black widows??

 
At 4:24 AM, Blogger Mommyleek said...

Yikes Doug, that's creepy! Glad you were turned around the other way.

E, I know you do, hon.

Eve, I'll leave you the number to the exterminator. :)

 
At 12:46 AM, Blogger me said...

OMG! Angie! I was riveted from start to finish and ~SO~ wanting that happy ending and ~SO~ glad for you - you got one! Geez-o-petes, I swear I would have reacted the same way. ANd killed it the same way, too. Glad everything's alright and hope you got those exterminstors to come out, too! Hugs to yas all!

 
At 3:11 AM, Blogger Erin said...

So there I was, delacing the corners, and, surprise surprise guess what I run across? A spider! I mean, who'd have thought I'd have seen a spider while removing cobwebs from my corners!? Yes well, it was big, and they're always a little bigger in my head than in reality anyway, and today, it was, in my head, a HUGE black widow, intent on eating us all alive. (See how easily I am convinced of things? LOL)

Well, the good news is, it was just a wolf spider, average sized, and highly susceptible to White Raining - but damn did he look good as he writhed out his final death throes.

Every.hair.in.place.

 
At 3:15 AM, Blogger msubulldog said...

Oh, Jeeezus, Ang! I still have goosebumps. I did some Google-ing and yes, we do have Black Widows (but I've never seen one) and Hobo spiders that are supposed to be nasty--not fatal, but skin necrotizing. Ick! But you're still welcome to move up! :) As an aside, I'm all creeped out now from looking at a bunch of spider websites. *shiver*

 
At 8:17 AM, Blogger Mommyleek said...

Yeah Amanda, I got myself all creeped out, too. I sat down and started reading all these websites and looking at all of these pictures and it kept me up most of the night.

Erin, you crack my ass up! Every hair in place! hee hee! Never would have thought of that. Thanks for the laugh, and sorry to get you all worked up over your wolf spider. We get those too, and I hate them. They're so big and icky! Luckily, the cats usually catch them for me.

The ones that are harmless but scare the bejesus out of me are the banana spiders. They're just so huge and funky looking! I had one crawl out of the a/c vent in my car while I was driving once. Almost put the car in a ditch before I could stop and get out. I refused to get back in until it was found and killed.

Oh, Amanda, in the 8 or so years that we've lived in this house we've found black widows, brown widows, recluses, a coral snake, various stinging things including a scorpion, and even a small gator in the canal behind us! We're living in a death-trap as far as I'm concerned. I honestly don't understand why people move here! Now I just have to convince Wil of the same.

He actually mentioned to me the other day that he was considering Georgia. Not sure what that was all about, but hey, it's a start. We'll just slowly migrate north and west! :)

 

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