It's no secret. I have 2 weaknesses. Mornings. Spiders. I'm not really ashamed of either, but it does suck to have to deal with them. This post deals with the latter. I've been a sworn enemy of those 8-legged bastards my entire life. We've exchanged mostly harmless blows, but then they crossed the line when one of them bit me in San Francisco in 2008. It resulted in an ER visit, and I still have the scar to remind me of our ongoing differences.
I know people think I'm a pansy for being afraid of spiders. But come on. They're gross. They have 8 legs!!! Six is pushing it. But 8!? With the ability to shoot rope out of your butt? You were clearly bred for evil doings.
In general, I've come to terms with living together. Being in a basement apartment in Seattle forced this. I developed a policy. If you don't move. You live. There were plenty of webs/spiders in the odd corner here or there. No big deal. I can live with that, as long as I know where you are. You wanna be vile and disgusting, have the decency to do it when no one is looking. Don't get cute and try to explore. There was a corner in our shower there that must have been prime real estate, because it was always occupied by some new tenant. I showered with one spider for months before his curiosity caused his demise.
Flash forward to Wellington. We've had our on and off dealings with spiders, mainly because the house is set into a hill and constantly under attack from very aggressive plants. However, things really escalated a few weeks ago when I foiled the plots of 2 different arachnid terrorist cells. One was creeping around the headboard by my pillow, hoping for a jugular opportunity. The other, 8 hours later, was waiting to ambush me in the shower. Both showed cunning in their planning an attack in my most vulnerable state. Also, these were NOT small. We're talking 2+ inch diameters. They're also fast and agile. This means war.
We isolated the spiders' primary access route and have been actively working to shut this down. There's a few inch gap in the back area that led right into dirt and plants (see "Spider access"). We cleared the plants a while ago. The a couple weeks ago we cleared the dirt down to concrete to create a bit of a buffer zone. This helped, but was not satisfying enough. Not only was there still access, but the wind would blow A LOT of dirt and crap through this gap into our hot tub area. Now, we don't have the hot tub going, but this is one of the reasons why. It has also been a goal of ours to get our hot tub ready by winter.
Last weekend we blasted the nastiness (see "Spider's lair" above) with water and flushed it all out. This was satisfying and terrifying. They were flying everywhere, including on me, from the spray. But this flushed everything out. This weekend we took the next step and lined this foot-wide channel area (see "Evil" above) with a bit of tarp. Then we took a trip to get rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Bonnie was pretty loaded down. It remains to be seen how effective this is on the spiders, but it certainly cut down on the amount of dirt coming in overnight, which is good news for our social outlook (working assumption: hot tub = friends). We shall see.
I know people think I'm a pansy for being afraid of spiders. But come on. They're gross. They have 8 legs!!! Six is pushing it. But 8!? With the ability to shoot rope out of your butt? You were clearly bred for evil doings.
In general, I've come to terms with living together. Being in a basement apartment in Seattle forced this. I developed a policy. If you don't move. You live. There were plenty of webs/spiders in the odd corner here or there. No big deal. I can live with that, as long as I know where you are. You wanna be vile and disgusting, have the decency to do it when no one is looking. Don't get cute and try to explore. There was a corner in our shower there that must have been prime real estate, because it was always occupied by some new tenant. I showered with one spider for months before his curiosity caused his demise.
Flash forward to Wellington. We've had our on and off dealings with spiders, mainly because the house is set into a hill and constantly under attack from very aggressive plants. However, things really escalated a few weeks ago when I foiled the plots of 2 different arachnid terrorist cells. One was creeping around the headboard by my pillow, hoping for a jugular opportunity. The other, 8 hours later, was waiting to ambush me in the shower. Both showed cunning in their planning an attack in my most vulnerable state. Also, these were NOT small. We're talking 2+ inch diameters. They're also fast and agile. This means war.
We isolated the spiders' primary access route and have been actively working to shut this down. There's a few inch gap in the back area that led right into dirt and plants (see "Spider access"). We cleared the plants a while ago. The a couple weeks ago we cleared the dirt down to concrete to create a bit of a buffer zone. This helped, but was not satisfying enough. Not only was there still access, but the wind would blow A LOT of dirt and crap through this gap into our hot tub area. Now, we don't have the hot tub going, but this is one of the reasons why. It has also been a goal of ours to get our hot tub ready by winter.Last weekend we blasted the nastiness (see "Spider's lair" above) with water and flushed it all out. This was satisfying and terrifying. They were flying everywhere, including on me, from the spray. But this flushed everything out. This weekend we took the next step and lined this foot-wide channel area (see "Evil" above) with a bit of tarp. Then we took a trip to get rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Bonnie was pretty loaded down. It remains to be seen how effective this is on the spiders, but it certainly cut down on the amount of dirt coming in overnight, which is good news for our social outlook (working assumption: hot tub = friends). We shall see.
