Usually I would second you, but not this year. I’m not sure if it was the mild winter or what, but the Black Widow population here in the Mid-Atlantic is booming this summer.
So far I have killed two out in the open, which never happens. I’ve found a few lingering around the broom closet, and one under the bed.
I needed to do some work on the pipes under our house two weeks ago, and I found the problem- There are hundreds of those suckers in my crawl space. I figured that it was probably just my house, but in casual conversation with my Dad and some coworkers, I found this is not the case.
My Dad, who is the most clutter-free person I know, actually vacuums the plastic under his house once per year. Even he has a bunch. I’m not really sure what to do about it, short of getting under the house with a vacuum of my own, and sucking up as many as I can find.
But vacuuming doesn’t even necessarily kill them. So you’d have to drop the vacuum into a vat of concentrated hydrochloric acid to be sure. I always use chemical interventions to kill spiders before disposing of them, just in case. Soft scrub bleach is good if you’re squicky about touching bugs even with a napkin, because it’ll congeal into a somewhat solid shape if you let it sit overnight. I had a neat centipede fossil when I tried that before.
That’s the freaking sparkly vampire of the arthropod world! WHY are the dangerous animals so cute? First furry caterpillars that [del]steal your soul[/del]sting like a motherfuck, then furry ants that kill cows!
Last weekend my 3-year-old daughter was hanging out near an open (screened) window and started to whimper: “Daddy!” she said, “There are bugs in the window!”
I looked, and said, “Honey, it’s okay, it’s just a spider and a centipede, and they’re both dead. I’ll get them out. See?” The dead centipede was one of those mottled gray monstrosities with long spidery legs, a house centipede. I reached for its body.
When my finger touched it, it came to life and skittered across the windowsill in my daughter’s direction.
I let out a startled “Oh!” and jerked my hand back.
My daughter watched open-mouthed for about three seconds and then began to scream.
It took me about five minutes to calm her down to the point where she could stop screaming, and then I squashed the centipede (which normally I don’t like doing, since they eat other bugs, but it was for my daughter’s sanity, so too bad, centipede) and showed her the remains and told her there were no more in the house.
THat’s turned out to be a lie–since then, I’ve seen two more in the house. But so far she hasn’t seen them, and I’m gonna try to keep it that way.
It’s a rare and marvelous thing to watch a phobia being born.
WHY are the dangerous animals so cute? First furry caterpillars that [del]steal your soul[/del]sting like a motherfuck, then furry ants that kill cows! 