The Itsy Bitsy...Holy Crow that's HUGE

I have mentioned before that I am not Supermom. But sometimes this message doesn't get into my brain. It especially Does Not Compute if it involves protecting one of my offspring. I am the Motherboard, after all. I make it all run.exe. (or start, if you are Mac user, like me) So, last night, when my son came in from playing outside to tell me there was a black widow hiding underneath a pipe by the corner of the house, instead of letting my husband, he of the Awesome Tech Support and Killer of Creepy Crawlies handle it, I grabbed a bottle of hair spray and went out the door to prove that I am more than just fantastically gorgeous, sexy and a bitchen writer. I am also: She Who Kills Spiders. I need a disclaimer here...I don't kill spiders. I catch them and put them outside, the poor things. But when it comes to venomous arachnids and children? All bets are off, and it WILL die.

The first thing I noticed was that the thing I was sent to dispatch was frickin' HUGE. She was as big as my thumb. I didn't take a picture, because, well, be honest, would you want to open my page and see that monstrosity staring back at you? No, me either! She clearly was quite settled where she was, and wasn't intent on relocation, especially not to the Big Web in the Sky, because when I sprayed her with the hairspray, I think she grinned at me, and retreated deeper into the crevice from whence she came. Thinking hair spray was going to freeze her was clearly wrong, she was probably in front of her Spider Mirror doing her hair! Part of the problem is that in an attempt to be more environmentally-friendly, we don't have Aqua Net or any of those aerosol-type sprays in this house. The only spray available was my daughter's year-old cheap Suave pump spray, left over from her theatre production. Probably not the best weapon against a Widow from Hell.

This was war.

I retreated to the garage to plan my next move and to grab a can of poison. We don't usually have spray, but readers may remember that I have a phobia of the er. "r words." Large black insects that scare me so badly I cannot even write the word. We keep the spray just in case an errant bug cannot read the signs posted all around my house and haplessly wanders into my driveway and certain death. I retrieved the can, and came once again to meet my enemy. I raised the can, poised to spray her into oblivion. She merely stared at me with all eight of her eyes, and tossed her now-gorgeous spider-hair in defiance. I narrowed my eyes in answer and let loose. I sprayed the snot out of that spider! And still, she wouldn't die! She did a lot of spider dancing, so clearly it was affecting her. I considered turning the hose on her, but remembered years ago when I had then-babies and was trying to exterminate a black widow in the back yard: those mothers swim! I continued to spray her and she was either going into neuro-toxic convulsions or she was break dancing, I still don't know which. I decided to end it and show her once and for all who the true Survival of the Fittest would be. I pulled a sucker punch. I picked up a brick laying nearby and I smashed her flat. Dead.

I? Am a a bad-ass. Thank you very much. Now I have to go and curl up in a fetal position because that was a #$@& POISONOUS SPIDER! WHAT the hell was I thinking??

T, who won't be doing that again. Maybe

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