Spider #2

So today I had a spider running around on my blinds. Not a giant hairy one, just a sizeable one with a reddish abdomen. And though I did not actually say to him, "You don't scare me!" I was thinking it as I grabbed my spider bowl and headed to the window to strip him of his freedom.

He wasn't just a fast runner, though. He was a fast erratic runner. So as I tried to put the lid on I kind of took it on faith that he was still zigzagging around inside the bowl, but the next thing I knew he was scurrying across the back of my hand. And then I was hitting a previously unknown octave as I dropped the bowl and shook my hands, and he was running erratically around the carpet at my feet. Which made him easy to find and capture.

Inevitably, once he was contained I started thinking about how fast all these spiders seem to be, and how cool it would be if I could run 10-20 times my body length in a single second. Imagine the possibilities!

On an unrelated note, I made a purchase at a liquor store for the first time today, and even though the sign said they card everyone under 30, and I'm only 29 and a half, I didn't get carded. What's next? Boy Scouts and Mormons trying to help me across the street? Middle-aged women speaking to me in sympathetic tones about "the change"?

A New Weapon in the War on Terror

Canned air!

I discovered another giant spider last night, this time in my bathroom. But he was crouched in a 90-degree angle area, and I was afraid if I managed to shoo him out he'd run right along the angle and then under the sink. And every time I poked my head over the sink to look at his scary hairiness, he'd rub his giant pedipalps, casting unnerving shadows on the floor as he did so, as though he was considering his odds in whatever was about to go down between us and was contemplating a preemptive strike.

So I was psyching myself up to prod him with a pen -- to get him out in the open, you know -- when I decided to do a quick round of the apartment looking for something over six inches long with which I could prod a two-inch spider. And just as I was about to resign myself to death by angry arachnid, I saw my air duster!

It turns out shooting a blast of canned air behind (not at, mind you, just in the vicinity of) a giant hairy spider prompts him to tuck himself into a compact little package, the benefits of which being twofold: 1) in place of a fight-or-flight response he opts for voluntary immobilization, so there's no jumping or sudden scurrying to send the would-be trapper shrieking headfirst into the bathtub, and 2) he looks far less intimidating to the weenie trying to catch him when he's cowering in a little ball, making it possible to take action without nearly as much jumping up and down, wringing of hands, and squealing beforehand.

Of course, as soon as I'd covered him with my plastic spider-catching bowl, he decided to flee. The legs came out, and I had a trapped, much-faster-and-bigger-than-I'd-realized giant hairy spider to deal with. Which, granted, is far better than having such a thing loose in my bathroom, or worse, blending in to my carpet two inches from my bed...or crawling along the back of the couch, for that matter.

Okay, I need to go turn some lights on now.