When I was a child, my mother had an old, used car that I believe they paid my parents to take off the lot. Mint-green and white and the size of the QEII, I'm sure it was the cat's meow in it's heyday, which I'm guessing was around 1936. By the time we got it, the green was no longer so mint, and it more closely resembled the Titanic--after eighty years at the bottom of the ocean.
I'll never forget the day that we were driving up the street, and a nice, big Daddy Long Legs spider decided to pop up out of the ripped upholstery on top of the front seat "bench" and say hello. Suddenly, the half-acre back seat dwindled to the size of a postage stamp as he began his inexorable march towards me.
My mother's claim that "you're so much bigger that he's more afraid of you than you are of him" did not impress me. I might have been bigger, but he had six more legs and a definite gleam in his eye that said, "Mmm. Lunch!" I can still remember bolting from the car with speed that would make a cheetah sit up and take notice.
Despite my mother's most fervent assurances that she had killed it and he was the last of his kind on the planet, I was constantly on "spider watch" every time we got in the car, sure that he was just biding his time and as soon as my mother turned her back, he was going to resurface and get me. And so began my lifelong hate/hate relationship with bugs.
Yesterday, I was once again terrorized by a multitude of the hateful little creatures.
I picked up my six-year-old nephew from school, then swung by his house to get the extra car seat Tom had left on his porch for when I picked up my niece from school later that day. Plopping it down on the back seat, I noticed a few little ants cavorting merrily on its seat. Brushing them off, I got in the car and started down the street only to hear my nephew say, "Hey Annie, there's more ants."
Thinking it was a mere one or two, I breezily told him to just "Squish 'em."
Two minutes later, he spotted more. And more. And more. It was like the entire ant population of the east coast had taken up residency in this car seat.
Flashing back to my own childhood, I knew I couldn't put my niece into this ant farm disguised as a car seat. She is even more of a drama queen than I am, and I don't want to have to read on her facebook page in a few years about how her aunt had traumatized her and made it impossible for her to ever lead a normal life. She should blame her mother like the rest of us!
My first thought was a gas station with a really strong vacuum to suck the evil little creatures out into oblivion, but since it was in the middle of a thunder and lightening storm, I decided against holding a metal tube in my hands. I opted instead to swing by the house and 409 them to death.
My nephew and I took the offending piece of car furniture up onto the porch and found a whole colony of the nasty little buggers had taken up residence under the seat cover. I sprayed and he squished any escapees that tried to head for my front door, which he informed me was okay to do since these were "wild ants" and therefore untrainable unlike the ones in the household ant farm he hoped to get. Yeah. Whatever kid. Just keep stomping.
After coating my back seat with the spray cleaner, and still sure that the next time I get alone I'll be swarmed, we headed off to get his sister.
I probably should have bribed him with some chocolate to keep his mouth shut about the whole incident, but I didn't think about it (probably because I couldn't get past the little voice in my head that was shrieking, "Ewww. Bugs in the car, bugs in the car!") and so he regaled my niece all the way home with the gory details.
And as if that wasn't enough bugs for one day, one of the critters must have escaped and sent out some kind of signal that I hadn't been sufficiently tortured because later that evening when we were down in the basement doing an arts and crafts project, we found ourselves under attack again. But this time, the bug world called out the big guns.
As I ran water in the utility sink, suddenly, from up out of the drain came the T-rex of spiders. Seriously, this thing had its own zip code.
Trying to play it cool, I managed to trap it under a plastic container (I was not going to squish it and have to clean ten gallons of spider-blood off my walls) so that Tim could deal with it when he got home (he he he). Of course, this drew the curiosity of the kids who eagerly rushed over to see the spider...and then even more eagerly rushed for the nearest exit (although my niece did seem to consider, for the briefest of seconds, throwing a saddle on the behemoth and trying to ride it).
Within minutes of reaching the safety of the TV room upstairs, during which time I had to repeatedly lie to the kids and tell them that the spider couldn't possibly get out from under the container, come up the stairs and murder us all out of revenge, Tim arrived home.
He barely had time to shut the door behind him before he was inundated with pleas to "Kill the spider!" Scoffing at us for being afraid of a little ole' bug, he went off to do his duty, and I followed close behind to make sure he didn't chicken out when he saw the size of his opponent. The other bravehearts stayed abovestairs.
Reaching into the sink, he pulled up the edge of the container, and I believe his exact words were, "Oh my God!" as he jumped back and the monster scuttled back down the drain.
Tim ran the hot water and pronounced him dead, but in my heart of hearts, I know he just probably cracked open a new bottle of shampoo, fluffed himself and is lying in wait for the next time I enter the basement alone and unarmed.
Bugs. I hate 'em.
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