City Girl in the Country Part II

It has recently come to my attention that I hate bugs. Not all bugs. I like lady bugs and butterflies…dragonflies are ok when they aren’t in my car or face. When I was a kid I used to capture caterpillars and my Granny would get wasp nests for me and I’d watch them grow in a jar. I guess I was a weird kid.

Now that I’m in the country, I am just dumbfounded at all the strange creatures I never knew existed. Like… remember that big fat, green caterpillar on “A Bug’s Life?” I found one of those on my PORCH! Yeah.. like for some reason, I was shocked to know they really existed.

One day we saw this tiny spider that kept jumping at our toes. He was a feisty little thing, but it was kinda funny. We’ve done everything we can to seal this old house up. We’ve enclosed the washroom and replaced some of the wood, so you can imagine my horror when I walked into the wash room the other night and saw a spider the size of a snuff can.

The kids make fun of me because I scream and flail my arms ridiculously at bugs that just fly near me. They are used to the country, I guess. My boyfriend was sleeping and I just started screaming. I couldn’t even get the words out. He probably thought there was an intruder or something and he was right!! That intruder was big fat ugly solid black spider hanging out on my wall!

He gets a flip flop and starts doing the man thing. And the more he swats, the more show up. Evidently they are timid spiders, even though they hang out like they are Koolaid Man or something. I hand him bug spray and as I see the one big spider turn into 6 additional spiders all over the place, I decide I must be living in a horror film and lay in bed with my cell phone frantically looking for spiders native to Louisiana on a 1x cell reception and rocking myself to sleep.

The only thing I could find was some PDF file that had the most poisonous spiders that was from like the State dept of Health and Hospitals or something. I didn’t see that spider on the list, so I figured it was ok for now, but I’m not gonna lie and say I wasn’t running for dear life to my front door last night when it was pitch black, fighting back tears like I was 5 years old.

Yeah. Kinda embarrassing. What’s worse is that now I see there are spider webs in the grass that won’t stop growing either. And, well, Mr. Man is in Memphis taking care of more important things, like…childhood cancer. Yeah, so my fear is kinda on the back burner. I called my dad and he made fun of me. I guess I need to grow up or something… but I STILL don’t like them!!