Spiders and Snakes

I wonder if anyone remembers that old country song by Jim Stafford called, “Spiders and Snakes.” I remember it simply because the song was about hating spiders and snakes and I could relate completely to it. I don’t like spiders and snakes. And when I moved into the camp I’m currently renting, that is exactly what I had to contend with…plus a mouse, plus a variety of flying insects and an assortment of other creepy crawlies.

I didn’t have a problem dealing with the flying insects and creepy crawlies. A couple of cans of Raid around the base of the inside and outside of the house, a few ant traps and some wasp killer and they were down to manageable proportions. And the mouse was taken care of with some strategically placed mouse traps (although I did scream like I girl when I first saw it, but then…like a man…I took aggressive action and got rid of it).

The snake creeped me out, and again I screamed like a girl when I saw it slither across my carpet. My son started yelling, “Kill it! Kill it!” but I couldn’t do that because that would’ve required clubbing it with something and then having its insides splat all over my carpet. That was a mess I definitely did not want to contend with. I had another plan. I had a piece of a dryer vent still in its plastic wrapping and decided to simply tear open the top of the plastic then place the vent in front of the snake and have it slide inside. Then I’d take the snake outside and throw it in the bushes away from the house. The plan worked perfectly. No messy snake innards to clean up and the snake could still have a long happy snake life away from my house.

It’s spiders that are my undoing. The thought of spiders inside my house or anywhere in my personal space really gets my skin to crawling. I cannot handle spiders. They reproduce at an amazing rate which makes them an army that’s hard to defeat. What  disgusts me though is the way they can literally cover a door or an empty room with their web; leaving the room looking ghostly and haunted within a month. What’s  scary, and is the stuff of horror stories, is the way they wrap their innocent victims in a  cocoon and save it for a meal at a later date. Can you imagine the agony of just waiting around to be something else’s dinner?

Speaking of nasty spider nightmares, I had a major freak-out when I read an article online regarding a woman who had a spider living in her ear canal for five days! She’d been complaining of a constant itching inside her left ear and after several x-rays the doctors discovered that the source of the irritation was the spider that had entered her ear while she was sleeping! A saline solution was used to flush the spider out. For me though, that would be the ultimate in spider horror stories!

It’s obvious now, to those who didn’t know before, that I have a serious spider phobia. This of course never ceases to amuse those who are supposed to be my friends. They thrill at my screams after tossing plastic spiders at me or tickling my head or face when I’m asleep.

I wonder though, what would happen to me if someone really disliked me. Man, would I be in trouble! Throw a bucket of live snakes and spiders on me and I’d turn into a quivering mass of jelly ready for the insane asylum. Guess I better not tick anybody off…at least not today anyway.

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