My bathtub is a haven for spiders who have a death wish. More often than not, when I slide the curtain across in the morning there is a spider in there waiting for the hot water. They come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes I don't notice until their bodies are floating in the boiling water. Sometimes I scoop them out and put them in the trash, or on the floor. I have trouble killing spiders, even black widows who scurry out from buckets in the yard.
When I was 16, I would name the spiders that would find their way in my room and make a web up in one of the tall corners. (My bedroom had a very high slanted ceiling.) I would look at the spider before I went to bed and then when I woke up in the morning. One morning, I looked up and there was no spider. (The spiders I might add, were small black ones - probably your garden spider variety, not black widows.) I lifted my sleep head and looked at my pillow. I had had the distinct feeling that the spider was close to me. There on my white flannel pillowcase was the black spider. It would have been right in the nest of my blonde hair. This did not freak me out in the least. Nor did I flick the spider off my pillow. Instead, the sleepiness of my mind plopped my head back on the pillow and went to sleep in the sunlight. Later when I woke up, the spider was back in its web.
After that experience, it makes it really hard for me to kill spiders. So what to do with those in my bathtub? I'm keeping my mind open for solutions. But the real solution is to have the spiders not end up there.
Pissed I missed your radio show yesterday and pleased to read your a sparer of spiders. I'm not sure why they end up in tubs or how to prevent them from doing so. But one option for prevention might be to leave some sort of spider escape line... maybe a thin strand of twine that will allow them to climb out and up to less slippier surroundings where they can take care of their business keeping bugs in check.
Personally I just try to shoo them into a glass and move them outside.
Posted by: Will Campbell | June 09, 2005 at 06:12 PM