This apartment is Spider Hell.  Well, more like hell for me and heaven for them.  That is, of course, until I spy them and either unceremoniously chuck them outside with much flapping (more on that later) or spray them with this rather stinking insect killer and, well, to be blunt, kill them.  I hate killing them though, it seems so mean.  It’s not their fault they chose the wrong place to live is it?  The other day I came home to a giant one on the floor.  By my feet.  I did manage to put a glass over it (in this instance, had I of sprayed it, it would have run VERY FAST with its GIANT LEGS).  So anyway, I had it trapped under the glass for a while before realising that I would actually have to do something with it.  The day before I had actually dragged a chum home from work to deposit two spiders, trapped under glasses, out of the window.  And the day before that a different friend saved the day.  But this time I didn’t think I could be rescued.  In order to make things more, um, bearable, I named the spider Maurice.  Why Maurice?  I have no idea.  It just seemed like a nice friendly name for a scary black-legged-big-bodied BEAST.  So as I tried to get a piece of paper under the glass I chatted to ‘Maurice’.  "I’m sorry Maurice, you’re just going to have to go.  I hope you understand.  You can’t live here It’s nothing personal, I just, well, if I’m brutally honest, I just don’t like you.  I know I don’t actually know you and have judged you on appearances but, well, I just don’t like you.  It’s just how it goes…. sorry”.  And so on and so forth, one can imagine I’m sure.  It was all going swimmingly.  I managed to get the paper under the glass.  And the cardboard under the paper under the glass.  And another piece of cardboard under the piece of cardboard under the piece of paper under the glass.  And it was good and I declared “Phew!  Now that wasn’t so bad was it Maurice?”. 

But then I made the mistake of realising that putting a giant black spider on a piece of bright white paper wasn’t exactly the clever thing to do.  Although, in fact, looking at it was quite possibly the most stupid thing to have done.  But I thought I was such a brave hero I could handle having a quick peek.  BUT NO.  So the short walk out of the flat and to the furthest flowerbed involved chanting “I can do this, it’s ok, I can do this, I can, I can, don’t look, oh God, I can, oh God, don’t look don’t look” whilst deep breathing ala giving-birth stylie.  Had anyone of looked out of their window at that point and seen me I think they’d have thought me in labour.

Still, it’s gone.  Somewhere.  And I’ve seen heaps of smaller spiders since which doesn’t bode well because they’re the sort that grow BIG and SCARY.  I wish my woodlice would drive them away.  Now that would solve the whole problem.

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