Wednesday, November 3, 2010

A Plague of our Own

It is the time of year again that always puts our family on edge.  Our first autumn in the country house brought the most unbelievable, creepy experience we have ever had.  It started when I was working in the flower beds.  I found several large, hairy spiders crawling around in the dirt.  I figured it was because the chickens were no longer roaming all over the yard, eating everything that creeped and crawled, and wrote them off.  A few evenings later, Husband took the trash out.  I heard an odd noise, like he was hosing something down.  When he came back in, he explained that there were a bunch of large, hairy spiders on the side of the house.  He actually did hose them down.  The next day, they were gone, but were back that night, plus more of their friends.  Each night the spiders got worse.  I called around, but the earliest an exterminator could get here was a week and a half away.  By the time a week went by, we had thousands upon thousands of these things crawling all over the outside walls of our house.  It looked like the walls were actually moving.  A Cub Scout meeting was held at our house during this time, and children had nightmares.  Friends came from far and wide to see if we were embellishing the story.  We weren't. 
The worst part of the whole thing was leaving for school in the morning.  School starts at 7:30, when it is still dark.  Before we opened the door to leave each morning, I made sure everyone had shoes on and was completely ready for battle.  Spiders completely covered the door and the door jam.  When I disturbed the spiders by opening the door, they didn't simply run away.  They jumped off and then ran.  My children were 3,5,6, and 7 at the time, and they were troopers.  As soon as the spiders hit the ground, the kids were stomping away, trying to get as many as they could.  "Spider juice" as they called it, was all over my floor every morning. 
Finally, the day of the exterminator was upon us.  We purposely did not clean up the spiders that morning.  I needed him to see exactly what we were dealing with.  He took one look at the carnage, and plainly told me that he had never seen them that bad, nor that type of spider that big.  He sprayed the outside of our house, and for the first time I didn't care in the least what it was doing to the environment.  Later, we learned that we were being visited by wolf spiders.  These creatures do not build webs, but hunt for their food during the day.  When the fields were harvested all around our house, the spiders came to our house to stay warm. 
Every once in a while we see a wolf spider.  We get the shivers every time.  We have not had another onslaught of them since that first year, but every year we worry that it could happen again.

13 comments:

  1. Wooooooo. Christine. I had a hard time reading THAT one. Caterpillars and spiders at the top of my "I'm a scaredy cat" list. As I scrolled down to finish reading, I held my hand up to shield the spider. I didn't get a good look. I just know it was green. I didn't want to see any hair! YUCK. OMG, I would have had to be committed somewhere. Probably not really. But Christopher would have been late for school EVERY DAY for sure.

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    1. I had a hard time writing it. Funny, though, how I'm not afraid of spiders anymore. Thousands of them, yes. One, not at all. My kids aren't either.

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  2. It is entirely possible that I would not have left the house until they were gone! I remember the year the neighborhood I grew up in (in MA) was overrun by Gypsy Moth Caterpillars. It was horrifying!! Everywhere you looked there were trees with vaseline covered bands of aluminum foil around them to stop the caterpillars from climbing, but once enough of them got stuck in the vaseline, others would just climb over them. You couldn't go out without an umbrella!

    As gross as this story (and my memory) are, I'm digging the whole #TALU concept. I have started following a handful of new blogs as a result, and although I'm pretty good about keeping up on new posts as I see them in my Google Reader feed, I don't normally go back and read someone's older posts, so the #TALU is a good way of "looking back" at someone new. :)

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    1. Oooh, those gypsy moths are so cool looking. The image of caterpillars crawling over others, though, is creepy.

      The TALU is a great idea. I am not good at looking through the archives of other blogs either, so it's fun to catch a glimpse of their favorites each week. Plus, I get to meet new friends, too. I always like doing that. BTW, I can't find that powdered fennel you used in the pork recipe I was going to try. Need to go back to your archives to find a different recipe.

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  3. Wow. Just wow. I just read your post to my husband and kids and now we all have the shivers.
    I usually say thanks for linking up with the TALU. This time? Uh-uh.

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    1. Hahahaha! Usually, a person knows she's made it when a blogger reads a post to her family. Not so much in this case, then? :)

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  4. Yuck I hate those things. And so many on your house! How did you stay there? We have a few that take up residence in our Alpaca barn and they creep me out. (TALU)

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    1. I actually had a few nightmares about them. The only reason I stayed is because they were gone during the day and weren't coming into the house.

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  5. Yeah, no... just... no. I would have burned the house down! hahaha Maybe not, but I'd possibly contemplate it. I was worried Wolf Spiders were poisonous or something (I am not up to speed on the varieties as I try to ignore them in general).

    Just imagine... if they DID make webs?!

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    1. Oh, don't think I didn't contemplate it!
      We don't want to imagine anything worse than what we were already dealing with, thank you very much.

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  6. No. No. Just no. NO. I would die. I would move. I would move and then die. I'm horrified at the thought of this. I couldn't live. I couldn't go outside. Just no.

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    1. Hahaha! Yes, it was bad. I did contemplate the feasibility of moving. Basically, there was no chance. We had to live through it.

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  7. OMG, Christine. I definitely missed this one - this was pre my blogging days. Unbelievable. I actually got chills from this and I am certain I will have nightmares. My Husband, though? He said, "Awww, the poor guys came in to get warm." Ugh.

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