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19day

2007-10-27

Arachnid Suicide

Filed under: General — 19day @ 04:10:55

Anyone who knows me knows I’m quite wary of spiders. Very much so. Very very much so. In fact, I had a dream only a couple of nights ago where I was back home in my room, filled with debris (so, you know, quite normal so far) but there was this tiny spider on the wall, but with really really really long legs, and as I sprayed it with Raid, more bugs kept pouring out of the wall.

So I was here asleep, but woke up at around 3am, not sure why, just woke up, decided to have a drink and look around online for a bit. Midnight was on the bed so I was petting her, and then she gets tense and looks up. I glance up but don’t see anything so I figure she’s just doing that thing again, you know, how cats always see something just over your left shoulder and freak you out. But no, she was still looking up… so I look up and wait for my eyes to adjust to the darkness relative to the bright monitor I had been looking at, and see a damn spider scampering quite quickly across the ceiling. Damn. It’s one of those spindling legged ones that I seem to get most often, the ones that will make a little web-nest in the corners where wall meets ceiling. Not sure of the actual name of the subtype, but I know them well. I had even killed one a few days ago in my room. I’m convinced they get in through the balcony door gaps.

Anyway, I get up and leave the room, as I’m want to do when a spider is running around in it. The cat still watching. I turn on some lights and grab my Raid (which, of course, I have handy having killed that other one). I’m annoyed that I woke up for this, how do I always know? Anyway, I hate these spiders because when sprayed, they have the tenancy to just bloody well jump from whereever they are, and I didn’t want this thing falling on my desk or worse my bed, and I’d never find it.

It had been racing around in a couple directions for a bit, and I was hoping it would head towards a wall so I could spray it and have it fall somewhere I could see so I could finish it off and dispose of it. Alas, it suddenly doubled back and raced towards the area over my bed. I decided to try to coax it back to the far wall by blowing… mind you I’m still near the doorway of my room, so I’m blowing at it from at least a meter away on the horizontal plane, and it’s probably half a meter up from my lips, making it… oh, something like 1.11 meters away. It fricken jumps, because of a light breeze. I figure something must have annoyed it for it to be running around like that to begin with.

So now I have no clue where it went, so I just leave the room and watch TV. Maybe the cat will get it, or maybe it will find a wall, climb up and I can start this again. After a while I’m tired of nighttime TV and come back into the room, the cat having joined me in the living room soon after I left since she follows me. I slowly from outside… then I take a big step in and look around the door frame and inner wall of the door frame to see if it’s actually behind me at this point (don’t laugh, earwigs have done that crap). I can’t see the damn thing. The cat comes in and starts swatting at some stuff on the floor as if she had either found it, or killed it and was just looking for more at the last place she saw it. But it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.

It was hard to judge just where the spider would have come down, I was sort of looking for a silk line from the ceiling, but I didn’t think these spiders would make those, so I guessed that maybe it would have come down in the very narrow region between the desk and the bed, so I get a flashlight and look there. And there it was, twitching a bit, but not at all a well spider. Evidently not noticed by the cat. It jumped from the ceiling because of a light gust of air, and slapped into the floor and that was it. I had just assumed that a little spider (well, as compared to a giant one like a tarantula) would have a small enough terminal velocity that it would survive that jump even without a lifeline. Guess not.

I think this entry is entirely too long to have reached that conclusion. But still, I thought it was interesting.
A spider was harmed in the creation of this story, if this upsets you, then I suggest you don’t read the news.

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