She Fangs! She Fangs!

It was a beautiful summer evening; the kind they show in douche commercials.  I was tending to my garden of succulents, lovingly pruning and watering my few survivors from the Ass Wreath debacle of 2012: http://www.momaical.com/2012/04/where-does-one-get-ass-looking-wreath.html.    I was just about to reach my hand into the largest of the pots when a slight movement drew my attention. A flash of black and red entered my line of vision and a black widow spider crawled up on to the top of the cactus.  She and I locked eyes for a moment (which is pretty intense since spiders have like 50 zillion eyeballs)   She smiled, languidly licked her spider lips and dared me to come closer. I'm pretty sure I saw poison roll down her fang.   Ill prepared for an encounter of this magnitude I ran into the house after my lethal weapon (aka my husband).  By the time we returned to the scene of the assault, she had disappeared back into her high rise succulent apartment complex leaving only her web of destruction as evidence of her presence.

Here is the Arachnid High Rise. 
It use to be full of neighbors until the "incident" when she ate them.

 

I have never been afraid of spiders.  In fact, I had a tarantula named Fluffy in college.  I have always been the type of person to scoop up a spider and free them outside.  Spiders are good: they eat bugs, they make cool webs, they can spin things with their ass.  But, now we live in California and the stakes have changed considerably.  There's an actual possibility of coming face-to-face with venomous predators like rattlesnakes, tarantulas and black widow spiders in your yard.  

My friend Erica is petrified of spiders and her house has been like Grand Central Web.  She has hosted a handful of the bitches in her house over the past few weeks.  When she sees them she "screams in their ear until they die" (or until her husband arrives to smash them).  I was teasingly calling her by her new Native American name: Spider Whisperer Who Screams in their Ears Until They Die.  Now, she's got the last laugh as I am the recipient of my own black widow God smack. 

I was upset because my children play in the backyard constantly and I can't bare to think about them getting bitten. I was pissed off because she was totally squatting on my property - rent free!!!! And, now I was more than a little nervous about taking care of my plants which is one of my favorite things to do outside.  And, I let my fear get the better of me and my imagination took on a life of its own.  This spider grew to mythological proportions.   It crept into my house and crawled on my face while I slept and laid its eggs in my ear.  It was lurking behind corners just waiting for the right minute to pounce and inject its venom into my heart to make a tasty Tracy tidbit.

I began to avoid my plants and wouldn't let the girls anywhere near them.  Lena, always helpful in a crisis, began to spew black widow facts:  "You know Mommy, black widows inject poisons into their husbands and then eat them."   Awesome.  Emmeline ran over to get us because a new "bug" was on the porch and now we are afraid of bugs instead of fascinated by them.  Lena: "That's a praying mantis.  They eat black widows. And they also bite the heads off their husbands.  Bugs are SO WICKED COOL, huh Mommy? "    Well, at least Emmeline's bug had arrived to save us because I was sure planning to give my killer nemesis a wide berth. 

I finally confessed my fear to my husband because he is so supportive and understanding of my neuroses.  And, once again, he did not disappoint.  "Yes.  Definitely do not enjoy your boring hobby because a tiny bug might bite you.  Did you even read anything about black widows? "  I confessed that I remained blissfully ignorant while enveloped in my fear of this bug killing me and my children and dragging our shriveled up bodies to her lair.  "Well, they can't kill adults nor kids unless they're sickly.  Why don't you stop reading all that stupid shit you buy for your Kindle and read something that actually matters?" 

It was time to take my garden back.  I arrive, armed to the teeth in my pink Kate Spade plastic rain shoes (don't want her to bite my feet) and brandishing a pink shovel (because pink is the antithesis of what the mistress of the dark will be wearing).  It's on.   I decided to fake her out with a deluge from the hose and spray her web.  Bahahahahaha!  My ruse worked! She sticks her head out from her secret underworld to see what prey is ensnared in her web of destruction.  I am ready.  I take a swipe at her with my pink shovel...and...nothing.  She doesn't even blink her zillion eyelids. She laughs an evil spider laugh (at least I think she did. No dogs came running, but I'm pretty sure she must have because she's evil and that's what evil creatures do when they best you).

I reach into my arsenal to pull out my backup weapon.  My husband.  He comes running (ok, he saunters and grumbles the entire way over because he was doing something). "For fuck's sake, Tracy.  That's what you've been afraid of? Give me your shoe."  And, a milisecond later she was nothing but a squish in my memory.  The girls run over, cheering on their hero.  I squirt the carcass off my pot with the hose.  Life gets back to "normal" where the girls are playing "detective spider squishers" and whacking each other with "fip fwops."  We are safe.  For now.  Until the tarantulas start making their way down the mountain in the fall.  But, I am stocking up on the end of the season flip flop/weapons. And I will be ready.