so last night i noticed a different looking spider on the wall in the garage (we have lots of spiders in the garage). i passed it by a few times, going in and out of the house. in the back of my mind, i’m always on the ready for a brown recluse b/c i’ve never met one in the person.
i’ve studied the photos in order to be prepared should i cross the path but i’ve never been able to retain it. i do a lot of gardening and our house is surrounded by woods. for real woods. and the word on the street is that recluse spiders LOVE the real woods.
you know those email forwards that go around making fun of southerners? one of them goes like this,
“If you run your car into a ditch don’t panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don’t try to help them, just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.”
finding a recluse is exactly like this. i took pictures, i put a lighted magnifying glass on it and took more pictures. i studied it.
then, i put it in the freezer.
[photo removed due to it's scariness.]
after putting it in the freezer, i worried that it would somehow escape the freezer during the night and want to kill me for putting him in a sealed container in the freezer.
does this mean i’m the jeffrey dahmer of the spider world?
some time after i’d put it in the freezer, i kept feeling phantom things touch my skin and i was convinced the back up recluses would find me and kill me for taking their uncle buck. every time i walked into the garage i scanned the room quickly for stray spiders ready to pounce.
being afraid, i kept thinking that i should have just left the damn thing be and i wouldn’t be having all this paranoia.
you know what happens to people that kill bugs do that don’t you? crips and bloods. i’m certain the covenants within the crips and bloods were derived from the animal kingdom. it’s a game of murder chess. you kill my guy, i kill yours.
despite it being the following night and i am still alive, it only means they are trying to throw me off. for the record, the husband got him off the wall and into the plastic container so he’s really the one they should kill.
full set of pics here.
**soon after posting this, i’ll have you know there is a grandaddy longleg not two feet from my chair.
June 12, 2009 at 7:36 am |
hahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahaha,
BTW, Once again, I have expanded my internet presence. I am now stalking you on blip. (I was forced to do this all because our chance meeting at the flash mob has been jerked out from under us.)
June 12, 2009 at 8:19 am |
Brilliant! Absolutely.
Uncle Buck? Escaping the sealed container from inside the freezer. Your mind is something else.
I swear, some people’s kids.
June 12, 2009 at 12:12 pm |
That is not cool. But it is cool. There is no way my husband or I would have gotten close enough to that thing while alive to take pics or magnify it or put in a container into the freezer. I wouldn’t even have gotten that close if it was dead. I’m a chicken and you are WAY braver than me.
June 12, 2009 at 1:26 pm |
I cannot come back here until this spider picture is off your page. I hope you’ll understand.
June 12, 2009 at 1:44 pm |
Although this spider is fierce looking, it doesn’t have the classic “fiddle-back” design of the brown recluse on the head. Perhaps it’s too light and I’m not seeing it.
June 12, 2009 at 8:37 pm |
Why don’t you just take it and put it outside? That’s what I do with our spiders. Putting him in the freezer is kind of mean.
June 12, 2009 at 8:38 pm |
Oh, when you scoop him up, you will be tempted to close your hand really tight so he doesn’t escape, but don’t do that or you might squish him
June 12, 2009 at 9:20 pm |
lola: blip is really cool and i like how you can see what your friends are jamming to, too. the flash mob is still on isn’t it? didn’t the date just move? i knew i shouldn’t have jumped down that rabbit hole….
scott: isn’t your mind similar? poor old uncle buck, he were a good lad.
math ninja: thanks for stopping by and commenting. math is very, very cool. we are chickens too, my husband really dislikes bugs but he’ll do it if he has too.
linsey: ok, i will remove it b/c you are my whore and i am good to my whores
cheree: it does have the fiddle thing, i saw it on the magnifier. i flipped out when i saw it
xup: i know, i felt mean about the whole thing but this spider can kill you. there would be no way i could “cup” it b/c it would bite me and i would die and you would miss me
(i do that for other spiders.)
June 13, 2009 at 12:03 am |
Now that you mention it…
June 13, 2009 at 7:15 am |
My grandmother kept a rattlesnake she caught in a mason jar on her dining room table. I posted about it once, it was the terrifying to a kid (ME!). I always thought it would unscrew the cap, come and bite me, and then go back in it’s jar in the morning (like nothing happened).
It’s a lot harder for a spider to get the freezer door open, however.
I’m wondering what your future plans are for the spider. Are you going to keep thawing, freezing,thawing, freezing? Have you thought this through?
June 13, 2009 at 8:22 pm |
Ah! Deadly spiders…that’s a whole different ball of wax. I don’t think we have any insect or amphibious life form around here that could kill you…. or any animal really.. maybe a bear. There are some bears around.
June 14, 2009 at 5:38 am |
I’m sorry. I just don’t like spiders. This isn’t to say I want them all dead. I know they serve a person in the world. I just want them away from me. Unfortunately, I live in country and spiders invade our house every summer.
You’re a lot braver than I am.
June 17, 2009 at 3:01 pm |
They RARELY kill you. So dramatic piglet.
I grew up around the black widows (no amount of “Do not go into the garage barefooted!” would dissuade me from going into my garage barefooted). We never got bitten. My dad has a funny story about me finding one when I was little and letting him know. He presumed I was wrong and I said nope, I can see the bright red hour glass. That was their first exposure to us having them. Mostly spiders leave you alone if you leave them alone.
Plus, the book Be Kind to Spiders was in our home library and I loved it. I never had a spider fear. Now crickets and cockroaches… that’s a whole other story.
June 17, 2009 at 9:22 pm |
lou: i have not thought it through and now i have no idea what i’m doing with it. i took it out today in the hope i would photograph it for the folks that aren’t sure it’s really a recluse. i was unable to do that so i put it back in the freezer. this is turning weird i think.
xup: no bears that i’ve seen yet.
andrea: i will protect you from the spiders!!!
joanne: i know, i do dance on the dramatic side of life. is it that noticeable or are you just that perceptive? the ladder me thinks, you are one smart cookie. that’s pretty cool you proved your dad wrong, and you are probably right about them leaving us alone. i’ve gone into some bad killing behavior lately….