This week, we had a couple visitors worth mentioning, proof that even when you live in town, the wilderness can still be right at your doorstep. I’ve mentioned Zach several times, as he is a kindred spirit, and he thinks some of the oddball things I do are interesting. Everyone has a fan or two 🙂 However, his mother Cheryl is NOT a fan of many of the things I do. Wade fishing, kayaking with gators, harvesting and eating rabbit are just a few of the things she gets skeeved or scared about. It doesn’t help that I know this about her and I am a compulsive practical joker…(She once had a frog in her toilet and blamed me for it…and I wasn’t even there!)
But NOTHING gets to her like messing with creepy-crawlies. Lucky for her, she wasn’t at our house this week. And after she reads this, she may not ever stop by again 🙁
The first visitor spooked me a bit at first. OK, and after a few minutes I was still a bit spooked by it.
It was after dark, and I was sitting at my computer working on an article, when my 12 year old let out a scream that stood the hair up on the back of my neck. I recall analyzing the moment, “Not a second scream, so no immediate threat. She was scared BADLY by something, so she must be stuck near it somehow.” As that flashed through my head, I scrambled for a shoe, rather than a gun, both being within reach. As I headed across the house, my money was on a palmetto bug.
Running across the house, I was the last one to arrive at the scene, the wife and youngest daughter beat me to the door of the bathroom, where my terrified daughter (well they both were terrified at this point) was covering behind the shower curtain, water running, trying to figure out if running naked and screaming would be a good move to take her out of harms way.
I was looking for the palmetto bug…I wish…I was a couple of leg off in my guess. Visions of It was a Southern House Spider, fairly common in abundance…only this guy was HUGE! I did a double take. Visions of John Goodman suited up to take on the monstrosity run through my head.
SHIT! *I* didn’t want to deal with this thing! First, he wasn’t actually hurting anyone. Second, he was HUGE!. Third, he probably EATS palmetto bugs! Fourth, HE’S HUGE! I took a couple pictures to buy myself some time…..
For a split second, me being a woman, dealing with a monthly cycle and the pain of childbirth seemed like a fair trade…then I realized this was one of the few jobs I was qualified to do in the house, and that there was NO WAY anyone else would do anything about it, short of moving out, and abandoning the house. It was up to me.
So I did what any “father of three, military veteran, hunter, trapper, and fisherman, lover of the outdoors and not afraid to sleep on the ground while camping” would do – I grabbed the canister vacuum with the looooong suction wand attachment and sucked it in to the canister to die. I was rather smug about dealing with it.
And someone else can empty the canister.
And the pictures don’t do it justice.
The second creepy-crawly was less intimidating when I saw it, until hours AFTER I started to think about it. My wife informed me that a snake had been killed in front of the house, and not just any snake, but a coral snake. I’ve seen others killed in teh road nearby, so I wasn’t surprised – until I saw it. All 2+ feet of it. It was easily the largest coral snake I’d ever seen alive or dead, and I was impressed. And, even though I know how they are good predators, eliminating many bad critters, they also pose a possible threat to me and my family due to an adult coral snake holding is enough venom to kill up to five adults. And this one was definitely an adult.
What bothered me later was this guy was living in my neighborhood long enough to get THAT big…so you KNOW he has family in the area….Lovely.
He WAS lovely to look at, and had he not been torn up by tires, I probably would have skinned it to preserve the hide.
So those are my unwelcome guests that visited us this week. At least the exciting ones. I also ran across a couple less frightening guests, more tobacco hornworms on my tomatoes, as well as an Eastern Lubber crossing the street towards my yard. I walked over and stepped on him though.
I wonder if coralsnakes eat them? Nothing else seems to 🙁
An in truth,as mush as I like a good joke, scare, or prank, I’m glad it was me dealing with them, however I did it, rather than Cheryl.
*I* like to be involved when she gets spooked 🙂 Can’t wait to go camping again….
db
Notes/Links:
Palmetto Bugs – Thanks to damageinc3d.net, where I sourced the palmetto bug pic. Its a funny read too, jump over to check it.
Southern House Spiders – Mostly harmless, males larger than females. Females rarely move once they set up “house”.
Eastern Coral Snakes – VERY rare to cause a fatality. Reclusive, rarely seen in the open.
Eastern Lubbers – The link offers a great write up. Kill them on sight though.
This story brings to mind visiting my sister Pat (when your wife was just a baby).
She kept as much of her yard natural and her house also, complete with resident FL house spiders to naturally take care of the bugs that more frequently invade with the abundance of natural foliage. I was glad she warned me that I might see them around and please don’t kill them, they have their purpose in the household. I sure do miss her ( I wonder if Cheryl would have visited.)
We use zero chemicals outside, and very little inside. Definitely increase “activity”, but seems to keep the levels about the same as using pesticides…once things get re-balanced. Mother Nature knows her business.
I didn’t even mention the tropical house gecko that lives in one of our bathrooms..but I LIKE him…once I got used to him scaring me at night.
And Cheryl reads this from time to time…her son definitely does…she’s been warned 😛
I have had several of those spiders in my house over the years. The first good story the spider was at least that big if not bigger (or so my memory has made it). I had nothing to kill it with, I was not going to get close to it either so a shoe was of no use, Since I was studying I had what was on hand, so I threw my college text book at it. Hitting it squarely, with the flat side and as the large math book bounced off the wall I watched that spider ride it to the ground and run!!! And so did I too. My most resent encounter I must say was the most hilarious. The kids were head in the front door when I hear a hi-pitch girlie scream BUT didn’t recognize it as any of the boys or Chiara, never hearing it before (I am letting you guess who did it hint he is really tall LOL), I ran and he was down the hall pointing at the front door. There on the door all of them had just walked through was a large spider. The thought that ran through my head was this really sucks, because I had to get in there to kill it. The dancing and screaming was so funny. In his defense he is highly allergic to spiders and no-seeums.
LOL!