Friday 23 September 2011

That People Who Like Spiders Will Always Lie To You.


It's 11pm and I am currently in a stand-off with an absolute BEAST. I have hairspray, he has a 6 leg advantage. As it stands he has the edge, playing the tension tactic by remaining stationary in a visible, yet well sheltered crevice for the past 20 minutes. I fear his mind games may be starting to work as I am now imagining he's moving when he is not.

Now, it's been three months since I left the bright lights of the city, and if there's one thing I've learned from country life, it's that I can expect to encounter at least one spider every time I go to do anything, anywhere.
(And also that exposure therapy definitely doesn't work).  

Back in the city, it's a widely known rule that spiders can be neatly divided into one of two categories: the wall spider, and the floor spider.  

Wall spiders- funnily enough, are found on walls and are magic in that they can spring up out of thin air, anytime, anywhere.
Pros: Tend to be smaller and slower as they have gravity to contend with.
Cons: Trickier to catch (require the more advanced ‘cup and card’ technique), have the power to drop at will. 

Floor spiders- are too big and heavy to crawl up walls, therefore are found on the floor. They nearly always announce themselves as an indiscriminate and terrifying scurrying movement out of the corner of the eye.
Pros: Fairly simple to contain if you have a bin handy.
Cons: Come in two sizes- huge, and fucking huge. 

 So that's all fine yes?

Actually no. Not fine. Oh how naive I was those few sentences ago.
Because apparently my flawless classification system hasn't quite reached the countryside yet, and as a result, I have an entire species of hopelessly deluded arachnids on my hands that are 'acting out of the term'. Fiddlesticks.

My current arch enemy is the Harvester Spider. (Fun fact: 80% of my day is spent trying to not think about what it is they might harvest).



Here's one now, swanning about like something from War of the Worlds. A textbook floor spider, and yet will insist on scaling walls even though itself, myself, and indeed, every fundamental law of physics, are all fully aware that in 4 seconds it will fall off the wall and we'll all shit ourselves.

So that's annoying.. BUT as any arachnophobe will know, there is a much greater enemy at large. An enemy with a lethal sense of smugness, and far fewer legs..
The spider bummer.
In case you're unfamiliar, this is the person who, when you fetch them in a code spider situation, responds with one of the following three, ridiculously unhelpful sentences:
1) 'That thing?! It's tiny! I can hardly see it!'

- Well quick biology lesson for you Daddy Ginge.. You see there's a rule of thumb in ecology that states: 'If, I mistake it for the CAT when it struts in, it's a FRIKKIN TARANTULA' (Darwin, 1871). 

2) 'It's more scared of you than you than you are of it'  

- Oh is it?? Tell me then SpiderFreud, do you see it fetching it's dad to come and save it? No you do not. That's because what you're actually seeing, is a cocky freak facing me head on because CLEARLY it thinks it's a 'hard man'.  

And finally, the worst five words you will ever hear.. 
(on returning to no spider)

3) 'Don't worry, it's gone now!' 

....   

*Deep breath iiin*

..Well that's a relief. So sorry to have bothered you, I'd forgotten the protocol was just to wait until they spontaneously evaporate. Silly me. Thanks for coming to help though, I don't know what I'd have don-NO IT'S NOT GONE!! IT'S NOT GONE! IT WAS THERE AND NOW IT'S NOT THERE! THAT IS NOT GONE! THE ONLY WORLD IN WHICH THAT MIGHT BE CONSIDERED GONE IS IN A GAME OF PEEKABOO WITH A SIX MONTH OLD AND THEIR VERY UNDERDEVELOPED PERCEPTION OF 'GONE'. AT LEAST WHEN IT WAS THERE I KNEW IT WAS THERE AND THAT IS WASN'T CRAWLING ABOUT IN MY EAR MAKING LIFE PLANS TO SET UP HOME, MEET 'THE ONE', INVITE HIM BACK TO HER PLACE AND IF THINGS GO WELL MAYBE ONE DAY THINK ABOUT STARTING A FAMILY AND LAY IT'S EGGS IN MY BRAIN!! .. FIND IT. KILL IT. YOU. IMBECILE.


So to sum up; if you have more than two legs (and are not my cat), it will never be ok for you to be in my room. 

Xx


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