We have a house guest of the unwanted variety. The seven-legged variety. (He had eight legs before his run-in with Buddy the other day.)
I'm writing about this on one condition: I don't make Brandon look like a wuss. I plan instead to paint a picture of the concerned, protective hulk of a man that he is.
One day last week (I can't tell you exactly when, but I'm sure Brandon could because he hasn't slept well since) he noticed a disconcertingly large, black spider lurking between our bathroom cabinet and the wall. There were several failed attempts at squishing the arachnid with a shoe. Between said attempts, Brandon would pretend not to be distracted while we read or watched TV, all the while imagining himself in the spider's (several pairs of) shoes, plotting the demise of the Richardses.
The next evening, we held a photoshoot with arachnis deathicus, who (shocker) was uncooperative and difficult to capture. *rimshot* We were trying to identify the thing so we know whether or not to be concerned for the resident owner of tiny sausage fingers that seem to be able to find crevices, large and small. Only managed to get one, blurry shot, but if you have thoughts, please share!
Fast forward a tense night or two, I'm in bed reading when Brandon calmly and quietly walks out of the closet with one of my shoes. He was out the door before I recognized the weirdness of the scenario and followed him down the stairs, to discover that he had fastened my blue Croc (from our EFY days - perfectly matched my blue polo) to the end of the broom and was pouncing like a jungle cat at the lair of the beast. Not a wussy bone in his body.
Some sweet friends gave us some intense bug spray and Brandon's only hesitation in using it is that he wanted to be responsible for and witness the spee-ider's demise. He wanted to be sure that it was, in fact, deceased and hadn't merely relocated. So he stabbed it with the broomstick. Thanks to his incredible athleticism and hand-eye coordination he connected with the thing. More specifically, with one of his legs. Having separated arachnis deathicus from one of his limbs and rendering it motionless, we celebrated conservatively. It hadn't moved for a minute or two, so we were cautiously optimistic. We went to get a thinner tool in order to extract him. Here's where it gets fuzzy. At the touch of the knife, the spee-ider fell backwards. Whether he moved on his own or was pushed is a question we're still living with today. So we sprayed. We stuffed. We prayed. The blockade in front of his lair hasn't moved, so we're hoping we've seen the last of it.
While I wouldn't say that we have an infestation, we have managed to trap a few other critters around here lately. They're significantly scarier.
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