pixie's temple

I rarely shower alone these days—or—Pixie: Spider Hunter

It seems that lately, the spiders have decided that the bathroom in our house is an appropriate place to set-up a home of there own—opposed to outside, which I personally find to be a much more appropriate place for them. Since I don’t like to kill them (as I mentioned yesterday, some feel it’s bad luck to kill them in your house) the spiders have found themselves in what appears to be a pretty stellar living environ.

Or so they thought.

I’ve discovered that I can only take so many days of looking up at the ceiling while washing my hair and spotting a spider. If the spider is tucked away in the corner and not moving, I’m okay. It’s when the freaky little arachnid decides it must swing/crawl/half fall up/down/across the wall/ceiling/shower caddy that I start to have a problem. I guess it’s spider-circus training season because the spiders have been all over the shower acrobatics lately.

Bad news for the spiders.

The other day I had enough of the Flying Karamazov Spider and while he was careening down the shower wall (while I was showering) I caught him. Not in my hand—there is no way I’m touching a spider with bare hands—but in an empty salt scrub jar I had in the shower. Lucky me, I had a readily available trapping device. I set the soon to be patented “arachni-trap” on the sill of the window in our shower and continued with my bathing feeling pretty good about my snare.

When I went to grab the soap I noticed a small sheath-like web in the corner of the shower wall. No biggie I thought, I’ll destroy the little spider bungalow with a Q-tip after my shower. I got the Q-tip and started to swipe at the web and it moved when I touched it. Inside was a second spider that I hadn’t noticed just moments before. Damn. That one freaked me out.

I knew it had to go because I was pretty sure that what I was trying to wipe up was not just any old web but a little cove that the spider builds to rest in when not active. Oh yeah, and guard their eggs.

Now, one spider is okay but I refuse to become a hostess for an entire family of spiders.

Well, I asked Josh to take care of it and he forgot. No biggie, for I am Pixie: Spider Hunter. The next day I went to tend to the web and the spider was gone. I imagine she had to leave the proverbial nest to find some food—since I had her mate trapped on the sill a mere 3 feet away from the nursery she created.

Bad news for the spider.

I grabbed my soon to be patented “arachni-abode-crusher” (the Q-tip if you’re having trouble keeping up) and with one quick swoop I had the web off the wall and in the trash. That still left the spider.

I saw her today.

I had just gotten into the shower and was leaning back wetting down my hair when I spotted that familiar pale yellow body on the wall across from me. She was just outside and above the shower curtain hovering way too close to the hook that held my towel for my post shower dry down. I still had the “arachni-trap” on the windowsill—but it still had the other spider in it and I didn’t want to risk them both being free with me still in the shower. I’ll just keep an eye on her I thought. Check on her again after I wash my face, then my hair, etc. She moved a bit so I had to pull back the shower curtain to check her status. I lost her. I finished my shower but had a feeling that I knew exactly where she was...in my towel.

I grabbed the towel very carefully off the hook and started to shake it out. Nothing. I took the corners a held the towel lengthwise out in front of me. There she was. At the bottom of the towel. I shook the towel again, with force this time, and she fell to the floor. Now was my chance. I threw the towel up on the hook and grabbed the jar. Dripping wet I blew on the spider to force her across the floor and up the wall a bit. Then, with the speed of a pubescent teen “climbing the rope”* for the first time, I took the lid off the jar and trapped her. I put the lid on, held the jar up and shook it around a bit. I laughed at the two lovers reunited, their fate sealed in my death trap.



I set the jar on the counter and dried off.
Tomorrow I shower alone.
I am Pixie: Spider Hunter.

*See Superstud: Or how I became a 24 year-old virgin by Paul Feig if you need an explanation of this euphemism.