So I bought one of those sticky spider traps...

[AllieBaba]

You know, the ones that have a picture of a horrifying hobo on the front:

You get 8 sticky pieces of carboard that you shape into boxes and place about the home to catch spiders and whatever big ugly bugs you have.

I have spiders. I'm a crappy housekeeper in an old home with trees around and substantial crawlspace under the house, cracks around all the doors, in-window air conditioners, too much furniture, infrequent vacuuming, etc. I don't have a spider problem, but I'm serious, when you're at the feed store and you see a box of these with that picture you think, OMG, I have GOT to get those.

So I bought myself one and the kids and I had fun putting them together (shit, I could have used a roll of duct tape and cut up shoeboxes, $4 max) and then placing the traps everywhere we've either seen spiders or suspect they may be....along walls, behind the couch, in the bathroom under the shelves next to the tub, behind the bookcases, next to the wall (per instructions) under the desk under the one air conditioner I still haven't taken out of the window.

FUCKING WASTE OF MONEY. The ONLY thing we've caught with those bastards was an adorable little bracelet the kids either made or got from the trinket box at school (they can't agree) that was ruined when I pulled it from the flipping bug trap.

Don't let scary pictures of spiders psyche you into buying CRAP.

That's the moral of this story.

Oh, and p.s., we still find wild spiders here and there.

We have a cat who eats them. We used to squish them. Now, every time we see one, we let Bacon in and show it to him. It takes him 2 seconds. Sometimes he foams a little at the mouth, but he seems to enjoy it.

Reminds me of eots a bit.

 

[Terry]

Allie,

If you lived next to me I would come over and clean your house. I'm not one of those OCD clean type person's but I wouldn't mind doing a "House Call" for friends.

Spiders tend to like the closets best. I too have tons of trees, with a crawl space foundation. I get spiders but I vacuum several times a week. I tend to not look up enough though. Once while eating at the kitchen table one day, I looked up above my window and "FREAKED OUT" a shit load of cobwebs and I couldn't believe I never noticed them before. Since then, I look up. I don't like spiders and snakes, all other critters I can deal with.

 

[AllieBaba]

I bought the babysitter one at the same time, btw. She's a crappy housekeeper too. I also bought her two wasp traps at the same time.

The wasp traps are always a good buy.

Veer left of the spider traps. They're worthless.

BTW, when my son was here he walked right into a (very small) spider dangling from the ceiling. He doesn't like spiders..but he can handle them unless they DROP on him. So I was quite proud of him for not freaking out.

He said he can handle the "sand spiders" in Iraq (and he's going to the place where they're the worst) because they "aren't really spiders..they're a type of scorpion".

About 3 weeks after I gave birth to my youngest, I was sitting in the living room of the group home where we had two diminished capacity, opportunistic & predatory sex offenders, and two just batshit crazy, men, chatting with my (male) co-worker while everyone was snoozing in their glorious drug-induced weekend sleep-in ("IT'S 2 P.M. ON SATURDAY! YOUR LIFEPLAN SAYS YOU HAVE TO BE UP BY 1 P.M. ON WEEKENDS, OUTTA BED NOWWWWW"...shifts started at 7, I was program manager, we had a little time to watch the tube unless someone was on a roll)

Anyway, I was sitting on the couch, we were watching some stupid early morning show we watched every weekend, and a flipping spider dropped down by my left ear. About 2 inches from my face, legs out, falling fast.

I completely lost it. I jumped up and started shaking my head off and stripping off layers of clothing. My wonderful co-worker (I was his boss) sat in his chair, completely stunned for about a split second, then started laughing his ass off adn didn't stop for three months. He said it was better than a titty show.

I think I've shared this before. But I'm with my son. No spiders from above, please.

 

[Luissa]

I lived in the basement at my parents house, spiders love basements. This is why I hate spiders.

 

[Terry]

camel spiders, yeah I had one of those in my house in New Mexico but not near as big as they are over in the Middle East. I freaked out, they do look like spiders except the tail had a scorpion type tail. Creepy...I sprayed an entire can of bug spray on him. LOL

 

[Terry]

 

[Terry]

 

[AllieBaba]

Allie,

If you lived next to me I would come over and clean your house. I'm not one of those OCD clean type person's but I wouldn't mind doing a "House Call" for friends.

Spiders tend to like the closets best. I too have tons of trees, with a crawl space foundation. I get spiders but I vacuum several times a week. I tend to not look up enough though. Once while eating at the kitchen table one day, I looked up above my window and "FREAKED OUT" a shit load of cobwebs and I couldn't believe I never noticed them before. Since then, I look up. I don't like spiders and snakes, all other critters I can deal with.

You are a true friend.

I am careful about my closets, and I bomb periodically.

We find spiders in the tub every now and then..but generally along the walls, in the ceiling corners.

I think this house used to be two stories, but they've taken out the stairs. It does have a big attic. I've never been, thank you. I can see where there used to be a window, and it's not tiny, but it's boarded up now.

Shortly after I moved here I paid my (hideously overpaid meth addicted) cleaning lady to bomb the place. She bombed the shit out of it, including the crawl space beneath the house. I'm really only WORRIED about black widows (which are abundant everywhere) and fiddlebacks or recluses.

I find spiders here and there, we don't get bitten or anything. But you can't see one of those frigging trap boxes and not feel COMPELLED to buy it. You (at least I) feel like you're committing felony child abuse not to, when you look at the shelf and there's a huge hobo spider image looking you in the eye and a product which swears they're all over and this will take care of it.

I do have a cleaning lady who comes once a week for 4 hours now. She's a nice Christian woman who charges 1/3 of what the meth head did. It's not enough to keep the place tidy, but she does keep the floors cleaned and picked up. Kinda.

You know, I'm really disappointed in the quality of cleaning ladies these days. I love mine to death, and she comes cheap and she's incredibly trustworthy (she cleans for the bank, you know they had to have done a background check on her...not that I have anything worth stealing or the meth head would have stolen it. As it was, she only stole a rug, once, when I moved)....

But you know, when I go into someone else's house to clean, I MOVE. I fly through the house. I don't do that with my own, I think it's some sort of weird pathological thing, or maybe it's just that I'm exhausted after work and don't feel like spending 4 hours a night working in my own house. But when someone is paying me, I move and I can get a lot accomplished in 4 hours.

I scrubbed floors on my hands and knees in the group homes when I was 9 months pregnant (yes it was that nesting thing....I just couldn't handle the greasy build up any longer). That was about 2 days before I gave birth. I was a program manager, I oversaw 35 employees and something like 12-16 clients in 4 houses.

Why can't I find a cleaning lady like THAT?

 

[Terry]

Allie,

If you lived next to me I would come over and clean your house. I'm not one of those OCD clean type person's but I wouldn't mind doing a "House Call" for friends.

Spiders tend to like the closets best. I too have tons of trees, with a crawl space foundation. I get spiders but I vacuum several times a week. I tend to not look up enough though. Once while eating at the kitchen table one day, I looked up above my window and "FREAKED OUT" a shit load of cobwebs and I couldn't believe I never noticed them before. Since then, I look up. I don't like spiders and snakes, all other critters I can deal with.

You are a true friend.

I am careful about my closets, and I bomb periodically.

We find spiders in the tub every now and then..but generally along the walls, in the ceiling corners.

I think this house used to be two stories, but they've taken out the stairs. It does have a big attic. I've never been, thank you. I can see where there used to be a window, and it's not tiny, but it's boarded up now.

Shortly after I moved here I paid my (hideously overpaid meth addicted) cleaning lady to bomb the place. She bombed the shit out of it, including the crawl space beneath the house. I'm really only WORRIED about black widows (which are abundant everywhere) and fiddlebacks or recluses.

I find spiders here and there, we don't get bitten or anything. But you can't see one of those frigging trap boxes and not feel COMPELLED to buy it. You (at least I) feel like you're committing felony child abuse not to, when you look at the shelf and there's a huge hobo spider image looking you in the eye and a product which swears they're all over and this will take care of it.

I do have a cleaning lady who comes once a week for 4 hours now. She's a nice Christian woman who charges 1/3 of what the meth head did. It's not enough to keep the place tidy, but she does keep the floors cleaned and picked up. Kinda.

You know, I'm really disappointed in the quality of cleaning ladies these days. I love mine to death, and she comes cheap and she's incredibly trustworthy (she cleans for the bank, you know they had to have done a background check on her...not that I have anything worth stealing or the meth head would have stolen it. As it was, she only stole a rug, once, when I moved)....

But you know, when I go into someone else's house to clean, I MOVE. I fly through the house. I don't do that with my own, I think it's some sort of weird pathological thing, or maybe it's just that I'm exhausted after work and don't feel like spending 4 hours a night working in my own house. But when someone is paying me, I move and I can get a lot accomplished in 4 hours.

I scrubbed floors on my hands and knees in the group homes when I was 9 months pregnant (yes it was that nesting thing....I just couldn't handle the greasy build up any longer). That was about 2 days before I gave birth. I was a program manager, I oversaw 35 employees and something like 12-16 clients in 4 houses.

Why can't I find a cleaning lady like THAT?

I had a maid when we lived in the Philippines and we paid her better then anyone else did their maids. That was $20.00 every two weeks. She lived with us 5 days a week. My Goodness that woman could clean. I would pick up on the weekend and come Monday she would get mad at me for doing anything. She would say, now i'll have nothing to do. LOL

Wished I had her now! Cleaned floors, ironed (everything) walked the kids to school, read them books, bathed them, cooked (all types of food), once I gave her an extra $40.00 and you know what she did? The Monday she returned she bought me shoes, purse and an outfit with it. I swear she was a robot, not from this earth or something. EDIT TO ADD: She would wake me up at 10 am, knock on my bedroom door and say "Terry, here is your coffee" I would get up, she would say what do you want to eat? I said nothing as my normal routine, I said, going to go play golf. Yep 36 holes a day, lived across the street from the first tee box. What a life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I so wanted to help bring her with me, she defiantly was a good person, and deserved to improve her life. We tried but not enough time or money.

 

[AllieBaba]

My sister used to pay her cleaning lady $36 a week to clean her 3000 sq foot house. I paid the meth head $36 an hour. Of course, she paid that 21 years ago.

Her second cleaning lady was Cambodian (later Thai, the borders changed) who actually came from the Philipines, married a navy man and ended up in our neck of the woods. That woman was incredible. She used knee pads to do the floors and made friends with our incredibly temeramental Rott/Portugese Waterdog (weirdly aggressive animals, btw) mix who treed my brother-in-law's brother who thought he'd make friends by stepping into the kennel.

I loved her. She was a Buddhist and made KILLER eggplant curry. She didn't eat meat (not even dog) but said she enjoyed crickets and where she came from they were like candy. She would occasionally eat chicken, and included it on the menu of her Thai restaurant, when she opened one.

Now sis has a Latina cleaning lady, she's had to bring her along but the thing with her is the whole family is available. If my sister needs someone to go to the dump, her cleaning lady has a husband, cousin or brother who will do it for $10. If she needs a babysitter, there's a niece or daughter available.

She saves the pool maintenance for my son. It requires a little more finesse and you have to handle chemicals industrial strength chemicals.

I can't remember where I was going with this.

 

[AllieBaba]

Spiders like attics, too. Particularly if you have trees hanging over the house.

I had no idea camel spiders lived in the states, too.

Like I said, my son can handle the thought of them because he considers them scorpions. That makes him feel better.

When my dad was in the military he put his foot into his boot without shaking it out and was nailed by a scorpion. Not one of the friendly big black ones, one of those little yellow bastards, he almost died.

But he recovered, the tough bastard. And he never put a shoe on without shaking it out first thereafter, and taught us all to do the same. I don't put a shoe on without shaking it out to this day, nor do any of my kids.

He also taught us how to kill a man by shoving nasal cartilege into the brain, but that's another story.

 

[hjmick]

I bought the babysitter one at the same time, btw. She's a crappy housekeeper too. I also bought her two wasp traps at the same time.

The wasp traps are always a good buy.

Veer left of the spider traps. They're worthless.

BTW, when my son was here he walked right into a (very small) spider dangling from the ceiling. He doesn't like spiders..but he can handle them unless they DROP on him. So I was quite proud of him for not freaking out.

He said he can handle the "sand spiders" in Iraq (and he's going to the place where they're the worst) because they "aren't really spiders..they're a type of scorpion".

About 3 weeks after I gave birth to my youngest, I was sitting in the living room of the group home where we had two diminished capacity, opportunistic & predatory sex offenders, and two just batshit crazy, men, chatting with my (male) co-worker while everyone was snoozing in their glorious drug-induced weekend sleep-in ("IT'S 2 P.M. ON SATURDAY! YOUR LIFEPLAN SAYS YOU HAVE TO BE UP BY 1 P.M. ON WEEKENDS, OUTTA BED NOWWWWW"...shifts started at 7, I was program manager, we had a little time to watch the tube unless someone was on a roll)

Anyway, I was sitting on the couch, we were watching some stupid early morning show we watched every weekend, and a flipping spider dropped down by my left ear. About 2 inches from my face, legs out, falling fast.

I completely lost it. I jumped up and started shaking my head off and stripping off layers of clothing. My wonderful co-worker (I was his boss) sat in his chair, completely stunned for about a split second, then started laughing his ass off adn didn't stop for three months. He said it was better than a titty show.

I think I've shared this before. But I'm with my son. No spiders from above, please.

I do believe that scorpions are in the arachnid family, though they are not spiders.

 

[AllieBaba]

They are. They don't spin webs.

But anything that helps my boy from being afraid is fine by me.

 

[JW Frogen]

When we lived in Arkansas we found a possum in our closet once.

I shit you not.

The thing scared the shit out of me, it looked like Keith Richards with an even worse dental plan.

 

[hjmick]

They are. They don't spin webs.

But anything that helps my boy from being afraid is fine by me.

I was just reading about the camel spider, though I was aware of them I don't know much about them. They are also in the arachnid family but in a different order than both spiders and scorpions.

 

[AllieBaba]

Possums are freaky. But I've never heard of one in the house. They generally don't come in.

Are you sure it wasn't a rat? Rats can get big. I've been in places they've invaded. They're scary.

If it was a possum, scary as it looks, it won't fight you. Rats fight. What did you do when you found it, and did it have a nest? Cuz if it did, it was a rat. Unless your closet was up a tree.

 

[strollingbones]

why are yall hating on spiders...i like them...no problems...surrounded by trees....

 

[AllieBaba]

Yeah honey, let's see you loving on one when you slip on your tie-dye nightdress and one crawls outta da neck and over your chin, post haste. And it's about 1/2 inch across.

Let's see you be all lovey-dovey fucking pagan wiccan shit then.

 

[AllieBaba]

Better yet, I want a video of you sitting your ass down on the toitie and having a big fucking widow come up from under the seat between your legs to wave it's fucking front legs at you, and jolt at you every time you move.

I was there. I was pregnant. It was not pleasant. For me or the widder.

 

[AllieBaba]

My one support of spiders is that they kill flies.

So why is it that I have a spider in my house every day, and one fly that lives THE ENTIRE WINTER LONG IN MY HOUSE. Spiders are supposed to kill those fuckers. And flies are only supposed to live for 24 hours. But every single woman I know has one fly that hangs out in the house all winter long.

And riddle me this....what the fuck is up with fiddleback/recluses? I was raised to believe spiders lived one season..3 months. Then they lay their eggs and die, like good spiders should.

EXCEPT FOR RECLUSES and apparently black widows. Recluses live 8 years, and my son has had a widow for the last 4 years in a spider case.

WTF????