John and I got home about one Friday evening and I kid you
not but there was a spider in the bedroom that leg-end-to-leg-end was easily
larger than my palm. I'm sure you are
looking at your palm right now and shuddering.
I think it was larger than John's palm.
John was going to be the big strong man and kill it with a wad of paper
towels but I thought it looked like the poisonous type so I said to use the
vacuum cleaner. My step-sister Beth made
the clever suggestion to vacuum up the spiders when I found out that Australian
daddy long legs are poisonous (not deadly, just painful).
So John is trying to suck up the spider with our expensive
but good vacuum cleaner with the adjustable suction (I dialed it up to the
absolute most suck) and the spider starts to RUN AWAY FROM THE VACUUM. I'm sure
it's no surprise that the longer legs of this spider meant that he could run
away from the vacuum faster than our ordinary spider. I had to leave the room.
I could hear John moving about and the vacuum doing
something but I couldn't tell what was happening until I hear the distinct
sound of something large going up the vacuum tube. Then John went around and vacuumed up the
other small creepy crawlies that were in the bedroom. I came back in and said,
"maybe we should leave the vacuum on for a bit so
we know the spider doesn't just crawl out again. So we're sure he's dead."
And this is where my husband became an even bigger
hero. He said, "well
we might as well vacuum then" and proceeded to vacuum the bedroom.
This page is copyright 2004, Laura Giletti
Last revised: February 2004