Bugs: Pretty, Unfriendly
10/03/08 15:28
“Eeeeee eeeeee eeeeee” was the sound drifting down the hall just loud enough to grab my attention. Inquiries produced this information: a five inch centipede* was conducting parade maneuvers across the top of my daughter Jericha’s closet door the evening of August’s final day.
What with large black spiders that leap out of holes in the ground if you pass close to their burrows, gleaming black widow spiders, giant wasps called cicada killers and these colossal centipedes, we have our share of run-ins with arthropods. Sounded like an epic battle shaping up this time. The weapons: venomous pincers (forcipules) on the rear end of the ‘pede, a dustbin and broom in the hands of the human.
While not especially intimidated by insects, we have a great respect for these enormous ‘pedes -- up to seven inches -- that crawl into the house any way they can from late summer through mid-fall. They have a nasty sting, after all, and the character on the closet door was ready to leap onto Jericha’s shoulder. Moving to the first line of defense -- a long handled dustpan with a lid, and a broom -- she began attempting to shoo the militant creature into the bin. He wasn’t having it -- straight off the door, he flipped into the piles of stuff in the closet.
“Eeeee eeeee eeeee eeeeee eeeee eeeees” ascended in volume and frequency. “I can’t go to bed with this in here!” “He’s going under...” “He’s trying to squeeze in back of the desk...” He trying TOOOOOOOOO ..................!!!!!!!” Metallic clunks, rows of “eeeee eeeeee eeeees”....
“GOT him!” Thank goodness. I go back to typing at the computer in the next room over. The metallic rattlings come closer, the footsteps slow down. Loud scratching noises emanate from the metal dustbin.... “Do you think he is trying to climb out, Mom?” she asks, stopping dead just in back of my wheelchair. The scratching sounds reach a frantic crescendo as she begins slowly to crack open the lid for a good look.
How could I help it? Another Insect Moment of Terror here in central New Mexico popped into my head just then, one that happened fourteen years ago, soon after we moved here from the more serene, insect-wise, coastal Massachusetts region. Jericha was in school during this episode, not pleased to hear about it later. Back east, due to a physical limitation of mine, I did my gardening sitting right on the ground. About the worst I’d encountered among those local insects were nests of yellow jackets down in the sand. Not too hard to detect from many feet away.
So down I blithely sat that hot New Mexico morning, trowel in hand, digging a bit here and there, dreaming of the pretty flowers that were going into these holes. Suddenly a large chunk of earth -- to me, it looked about half a foot across -- heaved straight up and fell off the back of one of the biggest black jumping spiders I had ever seen. In full charge. Straight. Towards. Me. The business end was way higher than the dragging rear end. Enormous spikey things protruded from its jaws, getting bigger by the instant. I thought. Time stopped.
That physical limitation I mentioned prevents me from getting to my feet in less than two full minutes, so exiting the area was not an option. Neither was stomping my attacker. Using the trowel as a shield, I prayed the spider would realize that it was about to become multiple spider chunks, do a one-eighty and vanish. Ha! Instead, the thing’s fury palpably rose. It scorched around the pitiful trowel -- which seemed to be shrinking in size even as the spider swelled like a balloon -- and headed straight for my leg!
How I dislike killing things. If anybody wants proof, it’s too bad they were not there with a video camera that day. Adrenalin surged, the trowel flipped the spider a good ten feet in the air, I was up and out of that spot faster than I’d ever left a place before. No flowers were ever planted in that area nor has my backside intentionally sat on the ground out there since.
Then, there are the black widow spiders. Pretty. Painfully poisonous. The realities of living here are sometimes less than postcard perfect.
One late fall night ten years back I was preparing for bed, quite late, in a state of exhaustion. Flipped on my light, glanced at the ceiling and holy sh -- that is a Big Big Big Big Big Black Widow swinging by a Thin Thin Ever So Thin, wee frayed strand of spider fiber precisely above my pillow. So big she was suspending a good pound on that taut strand. Really.
All thoughts of weariness whoosh out, the adrenaline whooshes in. Genius, I counsel myself, use your weapons. So I heft a crutch to crush the arachnid when my Inner House-frau speaks. "Dear, if you mush the spider on the ceiling you will have a mess of spider guts to clean up. And besides, do consider that this is Spider Woman country and if you kill the thing somebody may come after you."
Ms. Spider got the point faster than I did. A loud plop marked her abrupt landing on my thick carpet. She left puffs of dust as she scuttled beneath my bed.
So how many people would sleep with a two-inch poisonous spider gamboling 18 inches below their recumbent bodies? Mark Twain couldn’t do it when tarantulas got loose in his vicinity. Right. So I fetched out a vacuum cleaner, beginning a vigorous prodding around Under There with the open end of the tube. No softish clumping sounds up the tube. I recruited my exhausted daughter -- much younger at that point than she was at the beginning of this tale, standing behind me with a monster centipede in the dustbin -- to roll the bed across the room while I kept a beady eye on the floor.
No spider. So I poke the tube inside the many shoes I forgot were under the bed long before and got rid of a mess of desiccated six-inch centipedes. With wicked tail pinchers. Wicked.
Forty five long minutes later, I despair. Ms. Spider has foiled me. And I am so tired I am about to fall on my sword (as represented by a vacuum cleaner). Slump shouldered in defeat I get my daughter to shove the bed back where it belongs and if I wake up dead of venom -- there's something wrong with that thought -- uh, should I fail to arise in my usual perfect condition in the morning, my will is in the file cabinet...
"There it is!" screeches Jericha, racing for the exit. Following the aim of her vanishing but still-pointing digit, I spot Madame BW comfy and cozy in a small summer cottage quality web, between a TV table and the wall. Quicker'n outlaws drilled dimes with six-shooters, I zapped the little thing from her slumbers straight into the vacuum cleaner bag.
Plugged the opening up with wads of paper towels, and delivered the sealed package to my obedient daughter to drop into the burn barrel way out back. Off she went through the bedroom door. To bar free entry to any associate BWs, I closed the screen and turned to put away the vac.
Wham! I turn just in time to see a daughter-sized dent in the formerly intact screen... "Mom!" she yowls on her way through at 30 mph, "Close the door quick! She's after me!"
Pretty soon I hear a hundred pound body go womp on her bed, followed by the rustlings of many blankets and comforters being pulled up over her ears. To stop vengeful BWS in their tracks.
Many times that night did tiny tickles cross my face, creep around my neck...
Meanwhile, fast forward a few years, with the same daughter now taller than myself, poised motionlessly on one foot with the wicked pincered ‘pede.... My bare toes began to feel very, very tender down there on the bare floor...
Years of living with dogs came to my aid.
“Out!” I command. “Out!”
The only problem she had was preventing the dogs from trying to eat the thing after she dumped it onto the ground in the far back yard. Casually, she watched it whizz beneath the nearest bump on the landscape, slowly turned, admired the stars, and gently reentered the house.
*Another photo of one of our New Mexico centipede can be seen at:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-mexico/34778-bugs-critters-3.htmlt
It’s the first photo, the tan and grey one in a cage.
What with large black spiders that leap out of holes in the ground if you pass close to their burrows, gleaming black widow spiders, giant wasps called cicada killers and these colossal centipedes, we have our share of run-ins with arthropods. Sounded like an epic battle shaping up this time. The weapons: venomous pincers (forcipules) on the rear end of the ‘pede, a dustbin and broom in the hands of the human.
While not especially intimidated by insects, we have a great respect for these enormous ‘pedes -- up to seven inches -- that crawl into the house any way they can from late summer through mid-fall. They have a nasty sting, after all, and the character on the closet door was ready to leap onto Jericha’s shoulder. Moving to the first line of defense -- a long handled dustpan with a lid, and a broom -- she began attempting to shoo the militant creature into the bin. He wasn’t having it -- straight off the door, he flipped into the piles of stuff in the closet.
“Eeeee eeeee eeeee eeeeee eeeee eeeees” ascended in volume and frequency. “I can’t go to bed with this in here!” “He’s going under...” “He’s trying to squeeze in back of the desk...” He trying TOOOOOOOOO ..................!!!!!!!” Metallic clunks, rows of “eeeee eeeeee eeeees”....
“GOT him!” Thank goodness. I go back to typing at the computer in the next room over. The metallic rattlings come closer, the footsteps slow down. Loud scratching noises emanate from the metal dustbin.... “Do you think he is trying to climb out, Mom?” she asks, stopping dead just in back of my wheelchair. The scratching sounds reach a frantic crescendo as she begins slowly to crack open the lid for a good look.
How could I help it? Another Insect Moment of Terror here in central New Mexico popped into my head just then, one that happened fourteen years ago, soon after we moved here from the more serene, insect-wise, coastal Massachusetts region. Jericha was in school during this episode, not pleased to hear about it later. Back east, due to a physical limitation of mine, I did my gardening sitting right on the ground. About the worst I’d encountered among those local insects were nests of yellow jackets down in the sand. Not too hard to detect from many feet away.
So down I blithely sat that hot New Mexico morning, trowel in hand, digging a bit here and there, dreaming of the pretty flowers that were going into these holes. Suddenly a large chunk of earth -- to me, it looked about half a foot across -- heaved straight up and fell off the back of one of the biggest black jumping spiders I had ever seen. In full charge. Straight. Towards. Me. The business end was way higher than the dragging rear end. Enormous spikey things protruded from its jaws, getting bigger by the instant. I thought. Time stopped.
That physical limitation I mentioned prevents me from getting to my feet in less than two full minutes, so exiting the area was not an option. Neither was stomping my attacker. Using the trowel as a shield, I prayed the spider would realize that it was about to become multiple spider chunks, do a one-eighty and vanish. Ha! Instead, the thing’s fury palpably rose. It scorched around the pitiful trowel -- which seemed to be shrinking in size even as the spider swelled like a balloon -- and headed straight for my leg!
How I dislike killing things. If anybody wants proof, it’s too bad they were not there with a video camera that day. Adrenalin surged, the trowel flipped the spider a good ten feet in the air, I was up and out of that spot faster than I’d ever left a place before. No flowers were ever planted in that area nor has my backside intentionally sat on the ground out there since.
Then, there are the black widow spiders. Pretty. Painfully poisonous. The realities of living here are sometimes less than postcard perfect.
One late fall night ten years back I was preparing for bed, quite late, in a state of exhaustion. Flipped on my light, glanced at the ceiling and holy sh -- that is a Big Big Big Big Big Black Widow swinging by a Thin Thin Ever So Thin, wee frayed strand of spider fiber precisely above my pillow. So big she was suspending a good pound on that taut strand. Really.
All thoughts of weariness whoosh out, the adrenaline whooshes in. Genius, I counsel myself, use your weapons. So I heft a crutch to crush the arachnid when my Inner House-frau speaks. "Dear, if you mush the spider on the ceiling you will have a mess of spider guts to clean up. And besides, do consider that this is Spider Woman country and if you kill the thing somebody may come after you."
Ms. Spider got the point faster than I did. A loud plop marked her abrupt landing on my thick carpet. She left puffs of dust as she scuttled beneath my bed.
So how many people would sleep with a two-inch poisonous spider gamboling 18 inches below their recumbent bodies? Mark Twain couldn’t do it when tarantulas got loose in his vicinity. Right. So I fetched out a vacuum cleaner, beginning a vigorous prodding around Under There with the open end of the tube. No softish clumping sounds up the tube. I recruited my exhausted daughter -- much younger at that point than she was at the beginning of this tale, standing behind me with a monster centipede in the dustbin -- to roll the bed across the room while I kept a beady eye on the floor.
No spider. So I poke the tube inside the many shoes I forgot were under the bed long before and got rid of a mess of desiccated six-inch centipedes. With wicked tail pinchers. Wicked.
Forty five long minutes later, I despair. Ms. Spider has foiled me. And I am so tired I am about to fall on my sword (as represented by a vacuum cleaner). Slump shouldered in defeat I get my daughter to shove the bed back where it belongs and if I wake up dead of venom -- there's something wrong with that thought -- uh, should I fail to arise in my usual perfect condition in the morning, my will is in the file cabinet...
"There it is!" screeches Jericha, racing for the exit. Following the aim of her vanishing but still-pointing digit, I spot Madame BW comfy and cozy in a small summer cottage quality web, between a TV table and the wall. Quicker'n outlaws drilled dimes with six-shooters, I zapped the little thing from her slumbers straight into the vacuum cleaner bag.
Plugged the opening up with wads of paper towels, and delivered the sealed package to my obedient daughter to drop into the burn barrel way out back. Off she went through the bedroom door. To bar free entry to any associate BWs, I closed the screen and turned to put away the vac.
Wham! I turn just in time to see a daughter-sized dent in the formerly intact screen... "Mom!" she yowls on her way through at 30 mph, "Close the door quick! She's after me!"
Pretty soon I hear a hundred pound body go womp on her bed, followed by the rustlings of many blankets and comforters being pulled up over her ears. To stop vengeful BWS in their tracks.
Many times that night did tiny tickles cross my face, creep around my neck...
Meanwhile, fast forward a few years, with the same daughter now taller than myself, poised motionlessly on one foot with the wicked pincered ‘pede.... My bare toes began to feel very, very tender down there on the bare floor...
Years of living with dogs came to my aid.
“Out!” I command. “Out!”
The only problem she had was preventing the dogs from trying to eat the thing after she dumped it onto the ground in the far back yard. Casually, she watched it whizz beneath the nearest bump on the landscape, slowly turned, admired the stars, and gently reentered the house.
*Another photo of one of our New Mexico centipede can be seen at:
http://www.city-data.com/forum/new-mexico/34778-bugs-critters-3.htmlt
It’s the first photo, the tan and grey one in a cage.
