Friday, March 4, 2022

A veteran of the Arachnid Wars

Older Daughter messaged me the other day as follows: "I just want you to know I fought an intense ten-minute battle with a wolf spider and only screamed a little bit. Aren't you proud of me?"

I chuckled and replied, "What happened to the spider?"

She answered, "It came crawling down from the ceiling and hid in the curtains, which is the worst place it could have gone. I had to move the entire couch away from the wall so it wouldn't fall into the cushions/blankets somewhere, then get the vacuum at the ready, then talk myself up until I worked up the courage to tease it to the floor with the fly swatter and vacuum it."

My answer: "You're a veteran of the Arachnid Wars."

Comically, I had my own mini-version of this a day or two later. A crab spider showed up on my computer desk. Calmly I went to fetch a cup to scoot it outdoors. When I got back to my desk, the spider was nearly under my computer, but when I went to scoop it up, it disappeared. Where did it go? Where did it go? I disassembled my desk to no avail. The spider simply disappeared. Oddly, it came crawling out from under my computer a few hours later as if nothing had happened. I picked it up on a piece of paper and put it outside.

Such is life when spiders aren't one's favorite indoor pets.

16 comments:

  1. Did you know we breathe in an average of 8 spiders in our sleep every year?

    ReplyDelete
  2. German Proverb: A spider in the house brings good luck.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's bad luck to kill a spider. If you don't believe me, just ask Huckleberry Fin, or his publicist, Mark Twain.

      Delete
  3. They have taken over my house. All sorts of them. They are supposed to be a good bug/insect/whatever, but I've been bitten a couple times by brown recluse spiders which I never saw but the Dr. pronounced when treating their bites that didn't want to heal. Both times I had taken a hot water bottle to bed with me and woke up from being bitten. Never could find the culprit in the covers either time, but decided to not use a water bottle in bed anymore and haven't been bitten since.
    There are many others. Some big brown things come inside when it rains, and I kill them.
    And granddaddy longlegs, which I don't care one way or the other if they live or die.
    There are black widow webs that appear on the porch sometimes, and I pull them down and pressure wash. They're poisonous too.
    And there are some pretty garden spiders.
    Surely people think spiders are good, and they are good at catching bugs in their webs. But it's a lot like snakes. You have to be aware and knowledgeable of them, because if you screw up and offend the wrong one unintentionally, they can hurt you bad. So I personally have developed a general dislike of them.
    Yep. It's war.

    ReplyDelete
  4. When I hear my husbands voice reach a high soprano "dear". . . I know that there is a spider in the house. Ha ha

    ReplyDelete
  5. We have a treaty with our large hunting spiders. They are not allowed in the bedrooms. We prefer they stay on the exceptionally long hall that exists in our ranch style house. Sometimes I will go so far as to chase them out of the bedroom. In the hall I will speak politely with them and tell them to do their job of hunting bugs. It is wasps that I really hate in the house, that calls for the vacuum cleaner.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I do what you do, catch them and take them outside and toss in a bush.

    ReplyDelete
  7. If a person is in an area prone to black widows and/or brown recluse spiders, it may be a good idea to keep powdered bentonite clay on hand.

    Years ago my son was stung by a wasp on the back of his neck. He was about 7 and he cried and screamed, and I could see a shockingly large hole where the stinger had pierced his skin. Now coincidentally I had just received my order of bentonite clay (powder). I quickly made a paste out of a little bit of the powder and a small amount of water, and slapped it on the sting site ASAP. He IMMEDIATELY stopped crying. As in, INSTANTANEOUSLY. About 15 minutes later I wiped the dried clay paste off with a wet wash cloth, and Ta Da! There was no hole or discoloration, so you couldn't even tell he'd been stung!

    Bentonite clay adsorbs things like crazy. That wasn't a typo, it doesn't absorb things, it adsorbs, with a "d." I don't understand the chemistry, I just know it works!

    I later gave some bentonite clay to a friend who'd tangled with some hornets a few days before, and she said the bentonite clay paste trick helped her more than anything else she'd tried - that it finally got rid of the pain! So if bentonite clay can draw out wasp and bee venom, it stands to reason it would draw out spider venom. I hope that is helpful to someone!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Walmart sells bentonite clay in their natural beauty products section, under 10 dollars

      Delete
    2. Thank you. I've got plenty DE on hand, some with bentonite clay in it that my chickens love. And another clay that I can't remember the name of. I actually made a paste for a large swelling years ago and it pulled all the fluid out overnight. There's not much of that left so time to reorder. It may be bentonite. Just need to look at the label.
      The Indians used to use all kinds of clay for healing.

      Delete
    3. Spider venom actually destroys flesh and leaves a hole where the bite is, which simply does not want to heal. I wish doctors could steer patients better than just to drugs. It makes sense that a clay compress could absorb poison.

      Delete
  8. I really hate spiders- remnants of childhood trauma when I walked through a mest of newly hatched spiders. Shudder. My Marine Corps son recently told me of a training deployment in Australia: they were in some pretty sild country, one of the other Marines went to use the outhouse and found a Huntsman spider the size of a dinner plate had taken up residence. Apparently the screams from the Marine got the attention of the platoon who came to his rescue. Despite the full fury of several Marines, the spider just could not be killed. My son also hates spiders and he said it was his wort nightmare come to life. I won't be moving to Australia or any other place with spiders the size of cats!

    ReplyDelete
  9. My vacuum cleaner is my best spider defense. I use a cup or glass to cover them up and isolate them until I can get the vacuum.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I "heard" the post title as a lyric from the BoC song...

    ~You see me now a veteran of a thousand 'rachnid wars.~

    :- ) Not a big fan of spiders myself.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I think adsorb may be one of those things with a positive or negative charge going on in our bodies. With the clay, it attracts things to the surface of our skin to be eliminated.
    There is an edible form of bentonite clay, really pure. It binds with stuff in our gut with the opposite charge so it can be
    eliminated, meaning, toxins. I think is is actually used as one of the ingredients of OTC meds for stomach upset. Activated charcoal is another item that has been used medicinally for ingesting bad stuff, and you can also use a paste of that also on stings. I don't know if one is better than the other. Charcoal makes a bigger mess than the clay.
    So the spider topic has once again highlighted things I've almost used up and need to heavily replenish.
    It's reaching a point natural remedies need their own cabinet.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Hmmm. I need to get some of that clay. But then again, maybe the red and gray clay I can dig out of my yard would work? For stings of wasps, hornets, miscellaneous bees and fire ants, I have good results chopping up an onion and the onion juice works wonders.

    ReplyDelete