Creepy Crawlys!

As Halloween approaches, I am reminded of what happened to us when we first moved into our house here in Oregon. It was the 4th of July, the sky was clear, it was a beautiful night. My husband was lighting some fireworks in front of the house, when suddenly, he noticed a black widow spider resting on her web. He very calmly sent our daughter into the house to get the Raid and then sprayed it. It disappeared almost immediately after being sprayed, probably with the hopes of getting away. My husband went back to lighting fireworks, and after a time, he saw the spider struggling to crawl across the driveway. It was obviously hurt. He finished killing the spider. The night ended in fun and fireworks.

We told the kids, especially our daughter, not to touch one of those spiders if they saw another one. We told them to tell one of us so that we could take care of it. We emphasized this to our daughter because she had never been afraid of an animal or insect and is always picking them up and looking at them or whatever.

A couple of days after the 4th of July, the kids came running into the house out of breath. They said they saw TWO black widows on the side of the house. I was thinking to myself, "Yea sure, I bet! They are either trying to freak you out because they know you are afraid of spiders, or they are paranoid and now think every spider is a black widow!" I told them to stay away from them and to show their Dad when he got home from work. Well, my husband verified that the kids were right about the spiders. They were indeed black widow spiders, and there were not two spiders... there were THREE of them. I was completely freaking out at this point! He ended up spraying Raid out there, and he ended up killing FOUR black widow spiders. Not too many days later, we killed yet ANOTHER black widow in our garage. That was the last straw!!! I told my husband that either the landlord send someone over to kill them, or else I was leaving to stay somewhere else until the spiders were gone.

The landlord did get a person to spray around our house for black widow spiders. He told me we had A LOT of black widow webs. It kind of sounded like he had never seen that many webs all together before, but he did not come right out and say that. All in all, there were SIX black widow spiders that were killed. (The exterminator killed another one just inside the garage door.)

Writing this story now, the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, and I have that feeling like bugs are crawling on me!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! I can honestly say that this experience has NOT diminished my fear of spiders at all!

:)