The other day I opened up the rickety old window in the laundry room at the back of our house, expecting to see a beautiful fall day.
I raised the bamboo shade {hiding the old window's ugliness} and was aghast at all the spiderwebs. So I thought to myself, "Self, you need to clean this window." So I opened up said window and immediately a huge spider literally jumped at me! I shrieked as it landed on the floor, batted away by my karate-chopping hands, and crawled towards the corner of the room at lightning speed.
I heard my hubby's calm voice from the living room: "What is it?" He did not seem particularly alarmed. Apparently my shrieking is commonplace in our house.
"Sp-sp-sp-spider. Biiiiiig spider. Come kill it."
I don't have much love for insects. I know, I know, the whole circle of life thing. I get it. As long as they are outside I am perfectly comfortable with insects. Inside my house is a whole other ballgame. The death penalty is liberally given out to trespassers of the creepy-crawly kind. So hubby killed it. Bad idea. Karmically speaking.
This brings me to my bad spider ju-ju. I now have a huge spider in my garden that will not leave. I have garden-hosed this sucker down five times, yet my yellow coreopsis plant is where he wants to live! He spins his web over, and over, and over...
Finally I gave up trying to hose him. His will is stronger than mine. I decided we could cohabitate in the garden together. Here is my little spider friend:
I kind of feel nauseous even looking at these pictures. Also like there might be something crawling on me.
As long as he stays in his little space of the garden we will get along just fine. Right???
The moral of this story is: killing insects rather than kindly releasing them out into the wild may come back and bite you. Not literally. Right?
Yeeeeeesh.
<3 M! :-)
ReplyDeleteBLACK AND YELLOW ARGIOPE
GENUS and SPECIES: Argiope aurantia
One of Kentucky's largest spiders is an orb weaver called the Black and Yellow Argiope, Argiope aurantia, pictured below. Commonly called "garden spiders," these orb weavers can be almost 3 inches long from leg tip to leg tip. Argiope spiders are very common in backyard gardens, and have given a fright to many a homeowner. Although they are large and intimidating, their bite is only dangerous to people who experience severe allergic reactions to insect and spider bites.
Argiope spiders are also called "writing spiders" because of the bold zigzag pattern that they build into their web.
that is the largest spider i've ever seen...it's terrifying yet fascinating at the same time....If you stepped on it I wonder how big the mess would be? Just saying...<3 R
ReplyDeleteEwwwww scary! I can't believe how enormous it is! At first I thought it was some sort of optical illusion, but thanks to your anonymous entomologist friend above, I will now have nightmares :P
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