Charlotte & Stewart

Alright so here is the the pits of renting an old house.

The other day just as Kimball and I were headed to his bedroom to get PJs on for bed he spotted a spider under the door of one of the closets. This was not any old spider, it was HUGE!!! We do get some nasty spiders in the basement, but sticky spider traps generally do the trick, or I get a Kleenex or sock or whatever is close to quickly smash the thing. Well lets just say I wouldn't have dared to go after this one with a Kleenex. We yelled for Andrew and he quickly ran down to check out what the fuss was about. I ran quickly to get something to kill it with and a jar just in case we could bottle it up to be identified. Well after a few quick moves and a near attack we were able to get the thing into a jar. The butt (I think it is actually called the cephalothorax) was gigantic. After we got the kids in bed we spent the hour on the internet trying to identify the thing. It looked a lot like a Hobo, but we get Hobos in the basement and this looked somewhat different.

We thought it looked a lot like a Funnel Weaver spider, except it's backside was so much bigger than the pictures on the internet. But Funnel Weaver spiders aren't really much of a threat to humans which is a small comfort. Anyway so we have had this spider, Charlotte as I have come to think about her as now on the desk for the past few days. Yes notice I said "SHE". Well one morning when I sat down at the desk I noticed that her backside had subsided in size and she had an egg sack wrapped up in the jar. GROSS!!!! Andrew had mentioned when we caught it that it was probably a female full of eggs that is why it was so large. Well yes he was correct. We are just grateful that we caught her before we had a whole bunch of extra little spiders running around.

Now for Stewart I can barely even type this without shuddering. This morning I was walking up the stairs with Hazel in my arms when I thought I saw something dark move quickly around the closet door at the top of the stairs. I put Hazel on the bed and did a quick investigation. I opened the closet and peeked in. I moved things around and just didn't know what to think. So I closed the door and walked away for just a second. I remembered that I had to again open the closet to get out Hazel's hair bows to do her hair. Just as I started to open the door a mouse ran across my foot and into the bathroom. I screamed and said a few choice words that my children should not have heard me say. I ran for a sticky trap that we had in the basement for the spiders. I know I was not really thinking very logically at this point, but it was the first thing that came to mind. I put it in the bathroom right by the wall. I then proceeded to scare the little sh** in hopes that it would get stuck on the sticky trap. Well my lame attempt to catch the thing only scared it out of the bathroom and who knows where now. I am so angry that I didn't close the bathroom door and seal the opening underneath until we had actual mouse traps and Andrew to take care of the whole thing. When I called to tell him about Stewart Little's visit to our house he couldn't believe that I let the thing get out of the bathroom either. Well now Andrew is home we are going to attempt to identify where Stewart could possibly be hiding and set a few traps for him. Although I am so disgusted with my encounter with him I don't even want to put my feet back on the floor. Wish me luck!

To be continued. . . . . .