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Published: August 5th 2007
If you're an arachnophobe, or you love your cotton candy, don't read this. If you're not sure whether you're an arachnophobe, go ahead and read this; if you have a nightmare about spiders tonight, you may be a closet arachnophobe. Well, here we are in our new (rented) home. So, you know those old fashioned houses, really old ones, that no one has been living in for a while? And you know how people decorate their houses on Halloween, with the white spider web stuff with big fat spiders in it? Now take the two together, the house and the spiders, and that's what we were dealing with today. While Greg and Joey dealt with the movers, I was waging war with spiders. Thousands of them. Not kidding. All day long. Not kidding. Literally 9 am to 9 pm, with a couple of short breaks. You see, the house inside was nice and clean, no musty smell except in the freezer, which was moldy. (So we're getting a new fridge). Inside decor: delightful. Victorian wall paper, tall rooms, the curtains were the exact pattern as those I grew up with! Pure nostalgia. But outside.... spiders. A cacophony of spiders. All around
the house, under the overhang of the wrap-around porch. A chaos of spiders. But it only goes to prove that in every chaos there is devine order. The longer you look, the more you realize that there are different categories of spiders, nicely subdivided by location: the big fat ones (body of 2-3 cm plus not counting the legs) are right at the top, in a sticky mass of white webs (new webs and old ones; this is what I call the cotton candy). Surrounding these big/humungous spiders are beautiful large traditional spider webs and sizeable nests of baby spiders wrapped in orange cotton candy. Oftentimes you see those nests in the process of being left by the little ones, how cute, hundreds of teeny weeny spidey babies spewing forth all over. Further down the walls are the teenage spiders, middle sized, claiming their place in life. As is the case with all teenagers, these guys love to eat. So rather than being surrounded by baby nests as the big fat spiders up top, these teenage spiders are surrounded by the carcasses of dead flies or spiders of another species, and such as makes a yummy fare for a teenage
spider. The sucked-dry carcasses easily fall apart in the tiniest breeze, causing spider-carcass legs and other body parts to rain down upon a person just standing underneath, so caution is indicated... no heavy breathing in the mid-section of the wall. Further down to toe level we have the kiddy spiders. They live mostly off the discarded "bones" that the teenage spiders can't be bothered with. They catch the food from above by building thick nets of cotton candy---it looks exactly like grey cotton candy. There is also a color scheme in the chaos. The big fat spiders above are a pale green. The baby spideys are see-through beige. The teenagers are a healthy black, and the kiddies are grey-brown. Presuming, of course, that they all belong to the same species of spidey.
Once you get over the initial shock of being confronted with such yucky and scary absurdity, you shake yourself, wait for the shivers and tremors to subside, and get on with the business of claiming your territory. Every warrior needs a good weapon, and mine was a brand new shop vac. I had originally voted for spider bombs or spray, but one, Greg didn't want poison around the
house, and two, then you'd still have to deal with a mess of dead spiders. So the shop vac solution appealed to me, as I was also in desperate need for something to keep me busy all day. So here I was, vacuuming up spiders, ALL DAY. I think of it as sucking them up, or slurping them up. The sound effects are great. Little ones, you don't hear or feel going in, but it's satisfying just to see them disappear. The middle sized teenager ones might give a little "Plop" as they go in. If there's a bunch of them at one time, then they go "clickedy-clack". The really big fat ones go in with a soft "Shloopp!", and you can feel them go through, too. Very gross. The big fat ones you can only do one at a time. At times I was concerned they wouldn't fit in. The humongous ones go in like a rock: "Clunk", with the nozzle nearly jumping in my hand. It is impossible for me to tell which one is a girl spider and which one's a boy. Actually, with the humungous sized spiders, I have noticed two distinct sound variations. There's the
straight-forward "Clunk", and then there's a "Clunk/Tink". I think those are the boys... Now, you can't just go around sucking up spiders willy-nilly. There must be a strategy. For one, you have to work in small sections. Then there are vital rules to observe. Rule #1: Look up!!. See who's ready to drop on you, and try to beat them to it. Rule#2: If it moves, suck it up. There is a subclause to this rule. If it looks human and moves, don't suck it up. If looks human and doesn't move, you may be tempted, but I would advise against it. Unless you're sure it's dead. But not even then, I don't think. Rule #3: Watch your angle of approach. As with so many things in life, it's all in the angle. You want to stick with the 45 degrees angle of approach. You definitely don't wan't to come in from directly below. Because, if they catch on to you early enough, they'll parachute on you. Rule #4: start in the mid-section. Why? Because you can suck up all the teenage spideys first, because they're real quick to get away. (The big matronly spiders up top just sit there
and watch the show, and wait for you.) Once the teen spideys are gone, you go up higher and catch the lower ends of the big spider webs surrounding the slow, big fat spideys. If you were to go about it in the reverse, your nozzle would get entangled in spider webs AND teenage spideys. This should be avoided. As you come up with these rules, you notice that spiders have personality. There are nice, giving ones: They patiently wait for you to approach, then obligingly fall into the nozzle head. There are playful ones, that play hide and seek with you. They see you approach, then hide in a little nook, where you try to tug them out. Just when you're about to give up, they say "Oh, alright then. If you really want to suck me up, go ahead", and come out again: "Shloopp!" Then there are the devious, selfish spiders who can think of nothing but themselves: they try to run away from you, or even turn towards you as if to attack. To those, I say: "Ha, come to Momma, little spidey!... You think you're so tough! Well, we'll see, won't we." To the nice ones,
Joey's bushed, too
This is the rocking chair that Jeanette and Steve gave us recently. It tipps ALL the way back. We had the movers try it out, and they nearly had a heart attack tipping all the way back, thinking they'd fall over. Then they loved it and didn't want to get out of it again. Even the ex-mayor loved it. I say, " Sorry, Mr. Spider, sorry, Mrs. Spider!" To the teenager or kiddies one, I say "Coming through, oops, sorry, coming through..oops, sorry". To the really huge ones, that have been sitting there in the same spot for, like, decades, and think they're safe and sound, I say:" D'oh!" .... See, by then you're starting to get to know them. You've been amongst them for so long, you can identify with them, think like them. You look at a fly bumbling along, and suddenly you become aware that you're feeling hungry. You wonder how many flies it would take to make you a nice snack. Mosquitoes start to look yummy. You wonder in which corner of the veranda you would want to stake for your claim, if you were a spider. Then the next step is feeling sorry for them as they are getting sucked into oblivion. This stage in your assimilation process will occur after about 5 hours of spider-sucking. (I still contend that the term "sucking up spiders" is more descriptive than the term "vacuuming up spiders"... because of the slurping noises the hose makes when it sucks up the spiders.)
So here I am wielding my
The movers are here
They need Tim Horton's Icecaps to keep going. Brain freeze. shop vac nozzle like Harry Potter and his magic wand: "mors ad ararnea!" or some such spell, supposedly meaning "death to all spiders". It would help to know Latin. So as I am focused on this, every now and then I feel a tickle on my shin, on my neck , on the top of my head... after a few screaming fits and frantic dancing around, slapping myself like a demented monkey, I came to realize that it's not spiders on me, but little flies, or Joey's fingers, or a trickle of sweat (it was Hot today!). One might think that the spideys would be a formidable force to be reckoned with, if only they'd gang up on you. But thankfully, they're quite unimaginative. They're really quite docile. All they want is to be left alone to procreate, eat, and procreate some more. Hang on, isn't that what humans are like, too? I guess we have more in common with spiders than first meets the eyes (more eyes than two in the spiders' case). Greg actually offered a few times to take over for me, and one part of me said, Yes, pleeeeze!. Then another part of me, the obsessive
Childhood curtains
Pretty. Old-fashioned. Pretty old-fashioned. compulsive one, said no thank you, because deep down I knew he would let some get away, the big softie. Besides, this way I got to meet all the neighbours first. They'd suddenly stand before me, and say " Hi, I'm Steve/Wendy/ Susan... you must be the new doctor!" I knew what they really wanted to say is: "So, are you having fun sucking up spiders, crazy lady?" I think it's a small town, Woodstock is. I would try to always stay on the good side of a patient, not because of fear of getting sued, but for fear of what the neighbours would say about me if I messed up... All really, really nice people, kidding aside. Many with dogs or cats, also introduced by name without fail. One of the neighbours had moved here in January to retire--from FLORIDA! What the heck is someone doing here retiring from FLORIDA? I thought everybody in the world wants to go TO Florida to retire. Woodstock has got to be a really lovely little place. Then, as we were taking a water break, there was a lady who appeared all of a sudden standing in our mess of a kitchen, saying
" Do you still have my chair?" Greg and I look at each other, then she figures she better explain. Long story. It turned out we did indeed "still have her chair". It's a slightly convoluted logic. But hey, we're just trying to fit in. We did get an invitation for the neighbours' Chapel Street Dessert Club, which meets every Friday, at the neighbours, on Chapel Street, for dessert. Apparently, if you live on Chapel Street, as we now do, you're automatically a member. Is that cute, or what.... I mentioned the movers brought our stuff today, two very nice, very sweaty guys (I did mention it was really hot today, didn't I?). They did a 50:50, which is 50 % work, 50% chat and eat donuts. Very nice folk. I know all about the one guy's grandson's 3 heart operations for tricuspid valve something. Same as I know all about the ex-mayors deep vein thrombosis. He was really great to talk to , and he knows everything about all the houses for sale in the vicinity. If he and our real estate agent got together, they'd have the market cornered. He was at the post-office for 30 years. That
Annie sucking up spideys
SCHLOOPP! CLUNK! CLICKETY-CLACK! SLURP! doesn't mean anything in Vancouver, but here it means everything. Mail doesn't get delivered to your door here, you have to go and pick it up at the post office. And once you're there, you chat. So he knows everyone and their pets and houses. Good guy to know, I say.
So, in the midst of this flurry of activity, there was one quiet moment in the late afternoon where Greg comes up to me and turns my shop vac off. He says "Happy Anniversary!" We had both forgotten that it's our anniversary today. 24 years together, 16 years married. So we have a little kiss, and then he puts his hand in his pocket and pulls out a quarter. "Here, my love, I forgot to buy you something, have this..........it's shiny!!"
Awwww, how could I not love him. He' s the best!!
About 9 pm we left the house to go for dinner and then back to our hotel. As we passed our neighbour's house, there were a bunch of people sitting on garden chairs on the front lawn, waving and smiling at us. The Chapel Street Dessert Club.
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Towards the light
Anderson Family
Thanks for checking in, guys. Of course we'll still want to visit you! Yes , we will go to the Chapel Street Dessert club next Friday. We're looking forward to it. The parade today was so cute. Really rural-type, Greg will write the blog for today and post pictures. We test-drove the local cinema this evening, watching the Simpson's movie. It was fun. Then we all watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith at the hotel, for the third time. It gets better each time. Now Joey will go to bed and Greg and I will watch Friends With Money. It's Anderson Movie night.... It's always great to hear from you. Love, Annie, Greg and Joey