But I cannot stand finding them in crazy places, and they seem to know it and hide out just for me! I found one hiding among the pencils in my desk drawer once, and another sealed up in the cellophane on my lampshade! How the hell did he get in there? (And, more importantly at the time, how the hell was I supposed to get him out?!)
That's partly my problem with spiders, too. Although that part mostly comes into the annoyed bracket rather than the fear. I mean, if you're scared of mice you can jump on a chair if one starts running around the room and just get out of its way. But you just can't get away from these beggers. They're everywhere.
And LOL, I have that same philosophy - if they stay out of my territory that's fine. But if they come into the house, they definitely asked for it!
Although, I'd love to be able to capture them and just let them out into the garden, rather than killing them. Since they're so harmless they don't really deserve killing. Some hope though.
I have a huge list of things that I do, based on previous experiences over the years. Like, I'm wary about reaching out to switch on a lamp if it has a shade - after the time one fell out of the shade and onto my hand when I did. Or walking under a lampshade on the ceiling after one fell out of one and landed on my shoulder, of closing curtains, after I found a big one sitting on the bedroom curtains...And so on.
I had a brief period of relaxation when I discovered that a wasp spray actually killed most of them - very, very slowly - but it got there eventually. They'd sit there looking unperturbed for about half an hour and then suddenly fall off the wall, all eight legs in the air. Which, I'm ashamed to admit, I always found very satisfying. Until I read that any poison strong enough to kill a spider is strong enough to kill a human ten times over!
So that put paid to using that. The house used to reek of the stuff. <g>
Centipedes and that kind of thing don't really bother me. I did have a pretty freaky encounter with one a few years back, mind you. I was in the office at work, eating a peach for lunch. Was down to the last few bites, when the stone suddenly split apart in my hand as I lifted it to my mouth and out of the corner of my eye I saw this
thing uncurl from the centre of it and launch itself into the air. Shrieked like a banshee and dropped the peach and then spent the next fifteen minutes trying to persuade my colleagues I wasn't nuts, because there was nothing there.
Eventually, one of my colleagues moved a file binder and there it was on the side of it. A centipede about as long as my ring finger.
I swear I've cut peaches up and disposed of the stone before eating them ever since.
And now that I've freaked out all those who love peaches...I'm off for breakfast.
LabRat
