The scary spider closet

Or, why, sometimes it might be better just to not touch anything.

So, our Halloween party decorations are in a storage closet. This storage closet also contains occasional-use items like camping equipment, as well as a great many boxes of “I don’t think I can just throw this out, and yet, I have no real use for it” items awaiting the next round of ARC donations (clothing, household items) or whatever it would that might cause someone to need two entire boxes of World Horror Convention 2001 program books.

Sometime during the summer, this closet became infested with spiders. It’s a complete spiderama in there. Every time I move anything, there’s likely to be a spider behind it. Little spiders, big spiders — no monstrous tegenaria duellica (formerly known as tegenaria gigantea), thankfully, because those tend to paralyze me into a complete arachnophobic coma. In fact, all the spiders seem to be the same type, more or less: the species of the theridiidae family (which includes black widows!) known as the common house spider. But there were lots, at all stages of life — from nearly microscopic hatchlings all the way up to large (1 inch including legs) mature spiders.

I have probably killed close to a dozen of them already, including three of the larger ones. There are a couple of larger ones that I know are still in there, because they crawled behind something as soon as I exposed them. I have not finished moving things yet. I have no idea how many spiders I will eventually uncover.

This process is kind of wearing on my nerves — as some of you know I am a raging arachnophobe. What that means in this case is that killing every spider, especially the larger ones, requires a steeling of my nerves, a moment of panic, and then, hopefully, relief. Or, if I fail to squish, more panic, more panic more panic!

I shouldn’t complain too much, I suppose — the spiderama probably kept down the fruit-fly-o-rama, if the small piles of dessicated fruit fly corpses under some of the larger spiders are any indication. Still, ew! Piles of dessicated fruit fly corpses!

Anyway, I am feeling kind of trapped now, because I don’t feel I can end the process until the spiders are all dead — they might eat fruit flies, but I don’t want them breeding willy-nilly in there all the same. Because, did I mention the arachnophobia?

And yet I really, really don’t feel like doing any more spider-slaughter tonight. I don’t feel like moving anything more out of the way and then jumping when I see the characteristic crawling action. I am sick of peering into boxes of stuff I don’t care about anyway and discovering that, yep, the box wasn’t taped up sufficiently, and there are cobwebs and fruit fly corpses inside, is there a living spider? Poke, poke, poke. Poke, phew. Or, poke, eep!

Everything that I’ve been taking out of the closet, I just want to throw away now. It’s all covered in spiders. I have even thrown away a small pile of books. They were religious books, but it’s the book part I’m mostly superstitious about. Jehovah’s Witness stuff, so if you feel like dumpster-diving at my place, hey! You can read all about it.