One of my favorite posts of all time:
The Black Widow in my mailbox - Front Office Football Central
The Black Widow in my mailbox
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For the last 3 years I have lived with Black Widows in my mailbox. About three or four of them are cycled through each summer. Shortly after the Heat bakes one mistress in her oven like home, a new occupant readilly moves in. Sometimes a Daddy long legs takes their place, but sadly they don't fare much better in the summer months. The mailbox is completely unoccupied during the cold weather months. My wife is usually the one to get the mail, and since she is unaffected by the spiders presence this has been an arrangement I have been willing to live with for some time. Something happened this weekend that changed all that.
Sunday afternoon, the family is arriving home after lunch with relatives, when my wife asks the fateful question. "Can you get the mail? I forgot to get it yesterday." I give her that look. The look that says "You know I am scared of spiders, and I KNOW there is one in there". In truth I haven't gotten the mail in weeks, so I am really only afraid there might be a widow in residence. Well in at any rate, my machismo overcame my common sense, and I relented.
I pulled up to the mailbox. It is a big sturdy industrial strentgh beast, readilly up to the challenge of a bout of Mailbox baseball. I reach out with a little trepidation, but hide it well. As I pull open the door, I note the corpse of a huge black widow, hanging in her web. Her abdomen is about three eights of an inch around. Luckilly for me her web is well placed, at the far back of the mailbox. For some reason they always set up bug catching operations way back there. There is some mail in the box, and as I reach for it, I note a bit of web at the front of the box. As my hand brushes out of the way, I note that it doesn't feel as tough as black widow web usually is. "Hmmm not a widow web, I wonder what the new occupant is?" I think to myself as I start to pull the four or five envelopes from the box. As I am pulling the mail back into the car, I contemplate the possibility that perhaps that was actually a black widow web clinging to my fingers. I wonder if maybe it was "fresh" web material, that just hadn't fully "cured" yet. In a moment of lucidity, I decide to shake the mail, just in case I have an unwelcome stowaway on board. I firmly tap the envelopes downward on the top edge of the rolled down window. Happilly nothing is dislodged with my downward thrust. With growing confidence I go to tap the mail again, as I raise and begin to lower the mail for a second tap a black widow spider sails up in the air in front of my eyes.
I freeze and note with amazing clarity that she is twisting about trying to find purchase for her web as she seemingly hovers before my face. Then she falls, faster than gravity would normally allow, right into my lap. How I yearned for that second she was floating harmlessly in front of me. I find the courage to stop bouncing about the driver seat, restrained by the seat belt, and try and smash her there on my leg. After a few blind slaps I look down, and see her on the inside of my thigh, scurrying toward my knee. Then she is over the side, and out of sight. I can't get out because I am strapped in by the seatbelt, and the door will not open while I am stopped this close to the mailbox. I pull the car up a few feet, park and bail out. For the next 5 minutes I reflexively stamp my foot, just in case the bitch had crawled up my pant leg. I am glad I didn't consider stripping at that point, or I likely would have.
Once my wife and daughter are safely in the house, I am stuck needing to get back in the car, and drive it to the house. It is about 100 yards of unpaved driveway. I manage to do it, but throw up a pair of dirt and dust rooster tails nearly the length of the driveway. Upon getting safely inside, I strip. I play no games, I strip. Now that I am certain she didn't climb up the inside of my pant leg I begin to contemplate how to kill her in the car. I am a huge advocate of a raid "spider and bug bomb". My wife reminds me that it is her car. She will be the one driving it, and she doesn't want it to stink.
Cursed work calls. update later to "The Black widow in my car"
Black Widow in my Car redux
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a little deja vous
Allright Now just to refresh everyone's memory. I am standing in my living room wearing only boxers and black socks, Spider bomb in hand. My wife is adamant about not stinking up her car. "I am gonna be the one driving it. You need to kill it some other way" she says. She says "maybe the shop vac". I maintain that the bomb is the "Only Way to be sure". Again against my better judgement I give in, and pull out the shop vac.
Stalking a spider in close quarters with a 6 inch vacuum implement provides it's fair share anxious moments. "what just touched my hand" is among them. "Did something touch my neck" is worse though. You have to ask yourself the question "Do I really want to put my head down there so I can see what I am doing?". My answer was "No freaking way". So after a semi thorough vacuum run, I was left without a confirmed kill. The car is simply not useable in that state.
I return to the house, Strip and shower. I am really not taking any chances. The next two hours are spent arguing with my wife about how to kill our unwanted passenger. She suggested driving, in another car of course, to the store and getting a can of traditional RAID. I am pointing out that we don't even know where the hell the thing is now. "It could be anywhere." She is adamant, and now she has read the spider bomb box where it says not to use in a room smaller than 5x5. She has amunition now, so I have to pull out the big guns. "It could be up under the dash" I tell her. I suggest that it might have even gone into the air conditioner. "You don't want her flying out of the vent at you, do you?". Then I lay down the coup de gras..."She might even lay eggs." I shuddered at the thought even as I said it, and so did she. "BOMB IT" she declared.
So I prepare my plan to bomb the car without ruining it. I mean if I do ruin it, I will just explain to the insurance people that there was a black widow in there. It all made sense to me at the time. I approach the car, with not a little trepidation, but I figure I am pretty well committed now. When I peer into the car I note the shiny web below the steering wheel. I open the door, and look more closely. I can't see her, but I can see a pretty intricate web set up from under the driver seat up to the steering wheel, and below the dash board. I quickly move to plan B.
I go back into the house and return with a small strip of newspaper, about 1/8th of an inch wide and 5 inches long, and a flyswatter. In my youth I had the occasion to lightly pick at spider webs to see what the spider would do. What can I say? I had an inspirational biology teacher. A few memories stick out. First a "wolf" spider that scared the bejesus out of me as it moved in from it's position three feet away in about a half a second. Second was the many spiders that wouldn't go anywhere near the plucking because whatever they had caught in their web was too damn big to deal with. The little strip of paper was my way to deal with the second thought. To rationalize ignoring the first thought I had seen black widows before, and none of them had moved anywhere near as fast as that wolf spider. So began "Plan B".
I gingerly open the car door, using a flash light to verify my prey wasn't anywhere I wouldn't be looking. After making sure there were no spiders on the door that would be behind me I moved into position. I crouched in the little space between car and door. Newspaper strip in my left hand, fly swatter in my right. I was pretty sure the spider was under the seat. I sort of have a sense for these things I tell myself. I position the flyswatter so that as soon as she appears on the web just in front of the seat, I can knock her to floor where she should be easy prey. I pluck, pluck, pluck at the web with my bit of newspaper, but nothing. I remind myself to be patient now, because I really want to end this thing right here and now. "Gentle, Gentle I don't want to scare her." I think and I decide to just hold my hand still. "Wait for it....Wait for it", and then I am reminded of that feeling I had earlier while vacuuming. You know that "what was that that just touched my hand" feeling. Earlier I had been moving my hands around, and it was quite a disturbing notion. Now with my hand being extended under the steering wheel, being held perfectly still it was absolutely terrifying. I freeze, and look. I see the spider. It was there black as night, big as day, on my hand. Now as I think back to it, I am certain that she was headed for my sleeve. (NOTE to SELF: never hunt spiders while wearing a long sleeve shirt) Well she wasn't headed for my sleeve. In fact she had decided that whatever she had caught in her web was indeed too damn big. She was actually trying to get off of me and as far away as possible.
I was still frozen in place, I think now it was a memory from earlier in the day regarding the profound unpredictability of flying spiders that kept me from jerking my hand away. Just a second after landing on me, she was off and climbing quickly up toward the steering wheel. I pulled my hand back, and swooped in with the fly swatter. She fell to the floor near the brake pedal, scrambling toward the safety under the front seat. I cut her off, and managed to squash her with a jab of the fly swatter. I confirmed that I did, in fact, have a spider corpse on the floor. I breathed a sigh of relief, and went in to tell the wife the car was safe once again. Oh and to take a shower.
OK so now my wife and I are in agreement. We kill the spiders in the mail box, and I never get the mail again. Really, having the spider touch me, and seeing it hanging there next to my hand is gonna creep me out for some time to come. Okay back to work for me now. If you are half as creeped out as I am by the events of yesterday, then I have done what I set out to do.
