Friday, October 23, 2009

Why I Can't Sleep At Night...or...Wolf Spider Babies

So did you read the title for this post? Really...that does say it all. However, I will tell you a long and convoluted version of what my post title really said oh, so succinctly...

Rewind to Saturday night: As I snuggled down into my covers on that chilly fall night, I noticed what I perceived to be a hairball on the covers over my chest. My cat, Bella, has long hair and has a tendency to shed large hairballs. I flicked the covers to move the hairball...and watched it scuttle away. SCUTTLE!!! Hairballs aren't supposed to scuttle.

The lights were still on, and I looked down and saw a giant spider sitting on my Kindle. It was HUGE and brown. My first inclination when I see spiders is to get a tissue and pick up the spider, squishing it in the tissue before throwing it away. There was no way I was doing that with this big of a spider. It was every bit of 3 inches across. Before I could get something to kill it, the spider went under my bed.

Now, I don't keep a bunch of stuff under my bed. At the time there was a duffel bag and a clear, plastic comforter bag. However, I couldn't find that spider anywhere.

I was understandably freaked out. I hadn't been able to really inspect the spider, but I remember it being all bumpy looking and wondering to myself if those were baby spiders on its back...but I dismissed that as crazy-thinking.

Fast-forward (although we're still in the past here...) to Monday night. As I was pulling back the covers and checking for spiders, the huge spider came out from under my covers (MY COVERS!!) and stopped at the edge of the bed. As I went to go get a shoe (the tissue method was out), my cat jumped at the spider and it went under the bed...again. I got on my knees with my Converse in hand, but still couldn't find the spider. I then spent a restless night sleeping, but that was nothing compared to what was coming.

I started talking to people at work about my spider problem. Work reactions did not make sleeping any easier. Then I did the worst thing possible...I Googled "large brown spider". I found a spider website and couldn't really find anything that looked like my spider. The closest thing was a Wolf Spider, but it just didn't look big enough or bumpy enough. Then I found it...

Oh, yeah... A wolf spider with babies all over its back! BABIES! Around 100 spider babies! Oh my gosh!

Now I really couldn't sleep. What if all the babies decided to leave the mother ship? Every time I laid down, I would imagine those baby spiders crawling all over me! It's been terrible. I keep thoroughly checking my bed. I mean, this spider thinks my bed is its house! I did find a wolf spider trapped in my tub Thursday morning and killed it, but I'm sure it wasn't as big as that mother spider with all the babies.


I decided I was going to have to bomb the house if I didn't kill or catch (I'm afraid to try to kill it because I doubt hitting it with my Chucks is going to kill all those babies!) the spider in the next few days. So, I picked up a bug and spider bomb (3 actually) at Wal-Mart tonight. I'm going to try to bomb the house while I'm at my parents' house tomorrow. At least it'll make me feel better!

Wish me luck!

3 comments:

Mom2allofthem said...

We just found your blog...please tell me you found and KILLED this spider???

TamraJaye said...

Oh my Goddd! Gross gross gross. I've been researching all night, trying to find out what kind of spider infestation I have in my house- we have wolf spiders too. Only they're black/grey and brown. I was hoping the daddy long legs would kill them.. no luck!

Gifts of Nature said...

Man, it's been a long time since I checked this post. Sorry!

I can only assume the bug bomb killed them since I didn't find hundreds of wolf spiders running around my house after those babies grew up. I have found a few random ones in the house over the years but luckily none with babies on the back!

Just another hazard of living out in the country!