Spider stand-off :o in Adventures in paradise

The fever seems to have been replaced with the unforgiving cough.
Oh body, I could stab you. But that would hurt.

I’m trying to remain positive, telling myself today, ‘The cough is just the body’s way of telling me that it’s getting rid of the last of the fever.’ You know, like all my other weird thoughts.

I’ve been downing my cough syrup today like it’s life’s elixir. I’ve been doing well at sticking to the ‘10ml every 4 hours’ instructions but I’m timing those 4-hours down to the minute and I am savouring every ml as it goes down my throat.

I have always figured that cough syrups are nothing but a marketing gimmick. I can’t remember ever having used a cough syrup or mixture that actually does what it claims to do. Yes, I’m still coughing like a motherfucker. Yes, half the bottle is gone and the chemist is $10 richer. Even the placebo effect doesn’t seem to be working.
Like, my mind might allow me to not-cough for about 1 minute after I’ve taken the cough syrup, but then I’m back to sounding like a 50-year smoker who’s taken too long of a drag on a prison cigar.

I’m not sure if that joke worked. I don’t really care at this point.

In other news, huntsman spiders have been loving making themselves at home in our house lately. I’ve removed two of them from the lounge, and relocated to to the garden outside.
However, last night, as I was cooking my dinner, a HUGE motherfucker of a huntsman (that’s the only way I can describe it) decided to scurry it’s way along the wooden floor at lightning-speed, scaring the LIVING SHIT out of me!
I was so pissed off that having my heart full-on stop for a full 30 seconds didn’t cause the cough to fuck off, but hey, I wasn’t going to ask Mr-Spider to give it a second red-hot go.

Luckily the spider stopped, dead-still in the centre of the wooden floor, right between me stuck at the stove, and freedom on the other side of it. The kitchen bench stood as a barrier between us, but I would have had no issue whatsoever with jumping on top of it if Mr. Spidey decided to make an attack for me.
It gave me enough time to rip open the pan drawer in front of me to search for a container to capture it in. The first two huntsmen were quite small, so grabbing any old tupperware container was fine, but this time I had to be clever, so I tossed the first few I saw aside and grabbed the biggest one with a corresponding lid size in there (Why, oh WHY can you never find the right lid when it’s a life and death situation?) and I eventually found it, thankful that Mr. Huntsman was still stationary and plotting his death attack upon me.

It was then that I was brave and advanced toward it, like I had with the other two, and I realized it wasn’t as tough as I thought it was. It kept running away from me and then turned into a wuss by running under the fridge. ‘Clever’, I thought. I couldn’t get to it under there.
So I just went back to cooking my dinner, keeping a side-eye out.
We’d made a peace-treaty it seemed.
I had my dinner and cleaned up and all, but then I thought that I didn’t want to leave it alone in-case it decided to make a move to my room during the night, which is only along the hall.
So I made a bit of noise with the tupperware container and enticed it out. It quickly scurried along the side of the fridge and around the corner to the hall quicker than Usain Bolt on his PB day. Luckily it didn’t continue along to hall to my room, but into the laundry, which is where we then had our second stand-off of the evening.
It ran up the inside of the laundry door (on the other side)- that clever fucker. Now there was a small gap between the door and the wall.
I’m thinking this Huntsman has done this before. I was dealing with an experienced arachnid. I was gonna have to step it up a notch.

I ran past and switched on the light. I assume that he has night-vision special powers, but my power is electricity.
He was right up against the corner. Dammit!
I gently moved the door away, causing me to be basically trapped in the small laundry WITH the spider. He planned this, I just know it. But it was the only way I was going to get at it. This thing needed to go outside with it’s smaller friends.
Anyway, as the door closed, the light in the room reached more of the spider. I thought the light hitting it would affect it, but it didn’t budge.
I braved it (the size of this thing was more intimidating than anything) and inched the container base beneath and over the spider.
From previous experience, they will generally just fall into it, or grab one of their huge-ass legs onto it and walk in. Once they do that, I simply put the lid over the top and seal it to take it outside.
All was going well. I got the spider in there, and as I was trying to close the lid securely, because I wanted to be sure, I closed it a little too hard and the edge of the lid nearest to the huge huntsman SLIPPED and I freaked the fuck out.

The container was THROWN IN THE AIR (yeah because that’s the best reaction to have, Matt! Bravo!) and both the container and the spider went flying.
I, of course, freaked like a schoolgirl and screamed. You know, like the macho manly hero of the household I am.
The first thing I do is look to see where the spider ended up, and luckily it hadn’t landed near me, but near the laundry entrance again, but up against the cupboard. I tried again with the container, but the fucker decided to slip up into the cupboard through a gap in the bottom.
GOD-DAMMIT.

I gave up after that. I just went to my room and did my own thing. I figured it could spend the night in there. By this point, I was over it. He clearly didn’t want to go.

Then, a short while later, I hear the washing machine door close, as Nick was trying to do some washing. ‘Shit!’ I thought and ran to the laundry just in time to stop him from getting powder out from the cupboard where Mr. Huntsman had decided to make residence.

Anyway, cutting this short, by this time, the spider had already moved on from the cupboard and was right by the washing machine. How Nick didn’t notice it is beyond me, but he did notice it once I told him not to open the cupboard.

I then asked Nick if he felt like being brave, and we then worked as a team chasing this thing around the house, and it made a dash for my room. I was like ‘No WAY Hose’!’ and Nick trapped the spider against the garage door, and I used a piece of paper to ease it off the door into the container, and Nick took it out to the garden.

And that’s my story.

Last updated April 04, 2016