My Evil Nemesis

For those of you who may not know, we moved in October to Corona. We moved to an unincorporated part of Corona near Chino Hills. The land we live on used to be all dairy farms, but suburban sprawl has entered to create a nice suburb. However, some of the land's previous life remains, including lots of wildlife and jurassic-park size insects.

When we moved in, we hired Orkin to come and take care of all the insects and spiders that had inhabited our home that had been sitting foreclosed for close to a year. At least two spider hatchings had occurred there. After Orkin had worked their magic, we have had very little insect problems. A couple of spiders here or there, some large grasshoppers (but grasshoppers eat bugs, right). All seemed well.

Monday morning before Madeleine woke up, Jason and I were up and getting ready for our week. Jason left early for his weekly Monday morning sales meeting, and I was left in a quiet house. I thought I would shower early before Maddie woke up. I took a nice long hot shower and began to dry off when I look down at my bathroom tile and saw....the largest, most evil-looking SPIDER I had ever seen outside of an aquarium glass at the zoo! I screamed bloody murder and ran into my bedroom. When the adrenaline subsided, I creeped back into the bathroom to examine the intruder. As I examined it, I believed it was probably a tarantula and perhaps even poisonous. What was I going to do? My first thought was to do what my arachnophobe sister would do...grab the baby and drive away, never to return. We would simply have to move.

But then I realized how much money and time we've spent on this house and realized moving wasn't an option. I have 2 cats. I thought I could let them loose at the spider and see if they could kill it. But what if it was poisonous? They are small enough that they could be killed. Or they could just maim it enough for it to escape but not die. Then I would have a pissed tarantula in my house. I couldn't just ignore it, I have a 15 month old toddler who could be bitten by it. I had to kill it myself!! I am the mother lion of course. I must protect my lair.

Still naked, I put on my big hiking boots, ready to squish it. I could just use a paper towel...what if it jumped on me or spat on me or hissed at me? On the count of three, I stomped on it as hard as I could. This is the gross part. Massive amounts of liquid squirted out the sides of my shoes!! AHHH!!! Was it just spider guts or was it the venom? I concluded that now I had venom all over my tile floor! After flushing the contents of the bottom of my shoe down the toilet (including the two crab-like legs that had been severed) I had to wash and sanitize my floor. I had to do this all before Madeleine woke up. It was a harrowing experience.





As you can see, the spider has a glowing evil eye staring into the camera. He (or she) also has a hair or phalange sticking out of its face (another evil feature). It is either for smelling or trapping its prey. I think it looked like those curled-ended mustaches that evil henchman always have.