Well, Looks Like This May Be One Of My Final Posts Here...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

…because I see no way that I’ll be surviving the next 24 hours. But before I meet my fate, let me tell you of how I stared down Death, and fucked up royally:

I had just pulled a load of my daughter’s clothes from the dryer and went into her room to put them away. As I entered, I saw the largest spider in recorded human history on the ceiling. Now, as many of you know, I’m not one of those lunatics who like spiders…no no, I realize their place as The Deadliest Force In Nature, and deal with them accordingly. Preferably with something heavy, from a distance.

I tossed the pile of clothes on the bed, and tried to figure out how to handle this monstrosity. I was going to try the “whip a large book at the ceiling” method, when the hamster-sized horror started to slowly descend. Oh, he obviously knew exactly what he was doing…he only came down maybe a foot-and-a-half. That meant he was too far from the ceiling for me to go with an effective ceiling-smush, but still too high up for me to reach with a tissue, or a sledgehammer (damn old houses and their 10’ ceilings!).

I decided that I was gonna have to get tricky. I took an unused photo album off the shelf and opened it. I figured that even though this eight-legged abomination was the side of a poodle, I still may be able to slam him in the book. The trouble was he was still just a bit out of reach. There was nothing stable for me to stand on in the room, and I knew that if I tried to leave and get a footstool, his dagger-like fangs would be in the back of my neck the moment I took my eyes off of him.

There was only one thing to do – I was going to have to go for the Jump 'N Slam maneuver – leap straight up and try and slam him in the pages of the book (I chose a photo album because the plastic pages would make it easier to scrape off the five or six pounds of spider goop I was expecting).

Time for action – I positioned myself under his horrid, couch-sized frame, and made my move – Leap! Slam! Land! Slip! Drop! Skitter! Augh!

An ineffective shot. And now there is an eight-legged deathbringer, roughly the size of Buick, loose somewhere in my house. Plotting…scheming…thinking of nothing but vengeance. I can only hope that he got out of that room, lest my beloved daughter fall victim to this horror first.

I knew I should’ve never made that stupid promise to my wife about not hunting insects with WD-40 and a lighter anymore. She obviously knows nothing about home protection, and now we’ll all be paying for that ignorance with our lives.

Godspeed to you all…I’ll miss you.

2

Don’t you have a cat who can go spider hunting for you? Maybe EddyTeddyFreddy will lend you one of hers.

3

You don’t have a vacuum cleaner? Just suck the little bastard up and throw the vacuum out on the curb.

4

Can I have your collection of sheeps?

5

The problem there is that I can’t find the little walking horrorshow. Even though he’s roughly the size of a HumVee, he still manages to compress himself into the tiny crevasses that my 147-year-old home is filled with. I have no real hope of finding him now. All I can to is wait for him to find me.

6

They’re used.

7

Just move out of the area. I mean, damn, the hamsters are as big as Buicks!

How big are the sheep?

8

You have to nuke him from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure.

There is nothing worse than a spider who escapes the death you’re trying to inflict on him. Because then you know he’s somewhere… and for the next few hours, you’re scared to move anything, open anything, or touch anything, because he may be waiting for you. I missed a ceiling spider once and it landed on my unmade bed. Instinct was to rip the sheets off… but he was IN THERE somewhere. Oh my god, what if he crawled into a pillowcase???

Yay for boyfriends, that’s all I can say.

9

Serves you right, trying to murder one of Og’s magnificent creatures. Maybe if you offer him a kiss, he’ll spare your life. :wink:

10

I suggest a sustained nuclear sweep of the entire area. Your daughter may emerge with an extra finger or two but who couldn’t use greater manual dexterity?

11

Oh, thanks for reminding me. There was a big spider in my living room the other day, but I was too lazy to deal with him.

<comes back to computer>

Hmf. Spiders tickle.

12

I love how the spider grows with each mention by Hal.

When I was in college, I had an empty aquarium in the room- no money to get the fish. I scultped the bottom to look like a terrarium with the gravel and shells, placed a shell upside down and put water in it, and placed a spider from my D&D miniatures collection in the box. A sign on the front stating “do not open the lid” completed the scene.

People would not come into my room because of it; some wouldn’t even when told it was fake. It was an interesting conversation piece…

…until the Crazy Critter Guy got to it.

He was a friend from the gaming group; he thought it was the perfect opportunity for a joke on me, so he bought a tarantula, and placed in in the terrarium when I wasn’t looking.

No, I didn’t scream and run; my reaction was more “WTF is that?”

I kept it for the rest of the summer, but it died a few months later. I was never brave enough to pick it up or let it walk on me. but Critter Guy treated it like a kitten.

13

Oh, no! They don’t kill, they just play with them. Sometimes they play with them in your bed shudder

I once lived in this place in a somewhat wooded area, I was always finding spiders, like the brown recluse that liked to leap out of my garbage can when I took off the lid. shudder

Anyway, one day I noticed one of my cats making a weird face. I got closer to him and saw he was holding his mouth slightly open and there’s was something else weird about it. I got a little closer and that’s when I saw them shudder …

lots and lots of little legs waving out the sides of his mouth. He had a huge spider in his mouth and he was just holding it there shudder, shudder

Since I had seen brown recluses around I got worried for the cat and I also didn’t want him to take the spider to my bed to play with some more. shudder

I tried to get the cat to drop it so I could smoosh it and I chased him all over the house when he finally let me catch him there was no spider. I didn’t know if he ate it or dropped it. My worse fear was that he dropped it somewhere in the house and it would jump on me when I was least suspecting it.shudder, shudder

Oh god, I feel a case of the willies coming on …
Arrgghhh! Spiders, get it off me! runs around shuddering and screaming

14

Whaddyamean? From the moment I walked in the room he was the size of a Sherman Tank. Fangs like broadswords, I tells ya…

15

The good thing about those big ones is that you can grab 'em by a leg and toss 'em out. Into a fire. At the bottom of a pit. On an asteroid.

16

Don’t be silly. Depending on how big your house is there’s at least several, and lots of little ones, dozens probably, maybe hundreds. :smiley:

17

Where in the HELL do you live if the spiders are as big as Sherman tanks, dude? Next to Three Mile Island???

18

My wife can help you out. She has lots of practice from me yelling “SUSAN! COME KILL THIS GOD DAMN SPIDER! QUICKLY”

19

Hmmm, the Great Expanding Horrormongous Spidercreature! Yep, Hal, they’ll get the size of a large house sometimes. Just shatter whole buildings in search of tasty morsels like yourself. When the floorboard begin to creak and the rafters buckle, grab your little girl and run, Hal, run like the wind!

20

Then she looks at you and says, “Who the hell is Susan?”, right?