The Story of the Bat-Eating Spider

WARNING: If graphic stories about spiders freak you out, stop reading now.  Seriously, Dad.

Our house is by the woods.  I presume this is why we cohabitate with SO many spiders.  The backyard is basically uninhabitable, and you shouldn't approach our front door without something in front of your face.  There are so many spiders here, I am surprised there are bugs.  And not only the small garden spiders, but really colorful spiders, long spindly, and Spock spiders (you know, that make you think they only have 4 legs?), and really BIG spiders.  Perhaps not Texas big, but certainly too big to even entertain the idea of finding one in the bathtub.  Ehhh....

It's no secret that I have a pretty irrational phobia of spiders.  While I recognize that there have been many occasions that I have NOT been killed gruesomely by spiders, it's hard to remember that when one sneaks up on you, or does that creepy spider walk think, or hides somewhere just out of squishing. Ick.  Matt thinks I am prone to hyperbole about this.  I have no idea what he is talking about.  Really, I have come to accept that in the out doors, spiders will be plentiful, and I try not to bug them.  They get shooed away from the BBQ and the doorway, but they are basically an unstoppable force I know I am powerless against, and they are begrudgingly tolerated welcome to be in the yard.

In evidence of my willingness to share the planet with spiders, sitting in our living room while the sunrises highlights half a dozen occupied webs, with the residents patiently licking their evil lips and sharpening their poison darts or whatever.  Every morning at sunrise I resolutely DON'T burn them to pieces.  See how tolerant I am?

This is in part because I spend most of my day in the upstairs office, which is not a popular spot to be a spider.  Until a new guy moved in.  I went back to my text messages over the last month or so to Matt while he was at work, which basically chronicles the horrors.

Ack- Spider moved in up here. Totally ruining the view

Err... its hard to focus with this many heebie jeebies.  What about a second story window is such a good spot for a web?

I had accepted that this was not a small spider, and it actually wasn't at the window all the time.  On the one hand, not so bad, I don't have to look at it all the time.  On the other hand, WHERE DID IT GO?  Worse though, it was getting bigger.

Evil Giant Spider is back.  I'm using your monitor to block it from my view.  Barely.

OMG, How do spiders even get this big? What does it eat? Bats?

I thought there was a bat caught in a web up here. NO! IT WAS THAT GIANT BAT EATING SPIDER!
There is no emoticon to contain my horror.

And really, this things had moved beyond NW spider size.  It was verging on foreign exotic spider with some engorged, freaky abdomen and shockingly angular legs.  I was pretty sure when it wasn't handing out in the window, it was just strolling around the neighborhood, kicking puppies and stealing from old ladies.  I'm telling you, this was a viscous, evil spider.  And again, it wasn't around all the time.  Don't for one second consider where else it might go, because the obvious answer is INSIDE THE HOUSE. Ack.

Matt had suggested that I could turn the hose on it when I saw it.  Again, he thinks I am prone to hyperbole, so he was surely picturing some itsy bitsy spider route.  But hello?  Remember how that rhyme ends? The itsy bitsy spider goes up the spout again.  Oh no.  It the hosing is going to work, a person (I can't type "I" in this context) would have to be prepared for armed combat when you brought the beast on level.  I'm not running outside in my work clothes (read:PJs) to go to fisticuffs with the spawn of evil on EIGHT LEGS.

And this is how things went for a while.  I would move Matt's monitor around to avoid seeing it, and he never once encountered the thing.

Until last night.

We went for a late run.  We let ourselves out the back and leave the door unlocked, and came back a few minutes later.  My office light was still on, which made the window look like a homing beacon, except instead of the bat signal up there, the light was all but blocked by this viscous monster.  Even Matt was impressed by its gruesomeness.  We sprinted through the door (what if it drops, thinking my shrieking is the sound of its favorite prey, vampire bats?) and made a game plan.  Matt would go outside, hose the thing off the window, and maybe squish it.  I would bravely watch from inside, to bear witness to what might might be Matt's final minutes on early before he is brutally murdered by a spider in the dark- because everything about this was starting to go all horror show.

The hose got it off the window, but Horror of Horrors, in the dark, Matt couldn't see it.  He gestured that he wanted to come in a get a flashlight, but I had our home barricaded at this point.  I passed him a flashlight through a crack in the door, knowing full well that the monster had to be sneaking up behind him already.  With a flashlight in hand, he was able to see the spider, which was faking an injury curled up in a ball the size of a kumquat.  Seriously, it really was big enough to found in the dark.  He washed it down onto the porch, here he picked up a box to deal the deathblow.

He said it popped like a grape.  I think he was underestimated the size of produce involved, I am sure it much have been a small melon.  He was confident that his task was done and gestured for me to unblockade the house.  Ha!  You can't leave a spider carcass out like that!?  Too many spiders get non-squished enough, then reappear as an undead version of themselves minutes later.  You have to destroy the body to be sure.  The carcass was thrown into the yard, where I am sure a raccoon, or another hoard of spiders ate it overnight.

Ack, ack, blehhh.